23rd September - to Darwin

Well, it's been a while since I last posted, and HEAPS has happened since then! I haven't posted for several reasons 1) because there have been few chances to charge my laptop, 2) because we've been doing heaps, 30 I've been working hard on my journal, (partially to make it interesting to show people when I fly home in two weeks, mostly to make it rival my germany journal! (for those of you who've seen it, the book practically doubled its original size!)) and 4) sad to say, I've been particularly lazy. Having no internet access or electricity makes me less motivated, it seems...

The saddest part is that I've been lazy at a particularly exciting and interesting time! We've been in Kakadu for about 5 days, or so Dad tells me - I've been having too much fun to note the dates… :)

It took me a while to work out what day today was (Day 14. if you're wondering), so I figured it made much more sense to just put the date!

As I mentioned last post, Sept. 18th - Sunday - marked our entry into Kakadu. We stayed that night and the next in Gunlom, which happened to be very hot - there were'nt many bugs and flying things, but there were enough. As Jo said, 'It's not the drop bears you have to worry about, it's the drop bugs!'

Monday was pretty much spent with Joel, the curly red haired ranger of that area. We went to every one of his talks for two days - and we were the only ones who went! He took us up the mountain to the rock pools up there (absolutely beeYOOtifully refreshing! We LOVED it, but it was a big hike up and down the hill), did a talk and slideshow on Bush tucker (interesting what the aboriginals find to eat! File snakes (which they kill by sticking the heads in their mouths and breaking the necks), turtles (it's disturbing to see those photos - the turtles look very much like little babies), fish, yams, and all sorts of stuff!), and he also took us on a walk to the big water hole about 100m from the campsite on Tuesday. He showed us freshwater and saltwater crocodile skulls (a croc's head is about 1/7th the size of the crocodile), aboriginal baskets, banksia cones (did you know that if you burn these cones and squat in the smoke, it relieves diarrhoea??? That cracked me up), a saltwater croc-chomped buoy (the rangers leave the buoys in the water and gauge the croc by the chomps in it).