Today we are leaving Darwin so after breakfast we packed all our belongings back into the cases and set off in search of the car hire shop. We found it but unfortunately there was no one around but after a bit of a wait someone arrived and we finally picked up our new car – another RAV4 and went back to the hotel to get our bags and check out. As we are all inclusive in the Wildman Wilderness Lodge for the next few days we drove round to the supermarket to get some provisions just in case their idea of a good meal is different to ours! After that we went to Charles Darwin National Park which had a lookout and provides a final glimpse of Darwin before we set off down the Stuart Highway towards Kakadu. We had planned to stop in a couple of places, the first was the wetlands at Fogg Dam Conservation park but as we are just coming out of the dry season there wasn’t a lot of water there. We did go to the observation platform and we saw a few birds but not a lot else – there should be turtles and crocodiles in the swamp, in-fact there were a lot of signs about it being a crocodile area and that we should stay off the paths so we didn’t go for the planned walk around the area and got back in the car to continue the journey. Our next stop was Mary River National Park where we had planned to do a scenic walk of about two hours and also have lunch but as the temperature hit 40C when we arrived we decided it would be a bit of a folly to go for a walk so we just found a tree to park under and sat in the car for lunch. As we are now in the outback the drives are not very scenic but we did see our first (or many) road train which is where there is one cab pulling a number of trailers, the longest we saw had 4 of what looked like gravel and as we passed a quarry later it probably was. The rest of the journey we spent spotting termite mounds as some of these are really spectacular and very big! We finally arrived at our accommodation and it lived up to its name it is really in the middle of nowhere, we drove for 7km along what felt like a rally track but was actually a road and finally arrived at our destination. We have chosen a ‘habitat’ which is basically a room on stilts as apposed to the other option which seems to be a tent on stilts, it is really nice, although the bathroom is a little exposed – our shower has a direct view over the fields, good as long as no one decides they want to go jogging along the airstrip! We have a couple of trips booked for the next few days so I think it will just be a case of kick back and relax which is exactly what we did and while sitting on the deck a wallaby came by and was eating just outside the room then slowly but surely a number of them turned up so we just sat watching them until it was time for dinner. All we need now is for the the clouds to stay away we may even have a great sunset and some star gazing from the balcony.
