Day 7 - to Katherine Gorge (now known as Nitmiluk)

Well, today was (pretty) uneventful, apart from the fact that I woke in the night from the smell of the toilets that had reached into our caravan, and apart from the fact that Dini passed wind in the pool while I was right next to her, and apart from the fact that we met two other coopers at the new caravan park at Nitmiluk, and apart form the fact that there's a tour called Nit Nit tour, or something like that (which happens to be Tin Tin backwards, and we all know who that is… :)

That was just a brief overview of a day in the wonderful life of Us, adventurers of uncharted land (well, uncharted in this family), experiencers of before unexperienced experiences (and trust me, some of those experiences are completely what you would not expect on a trip around Australia, and that you would not experience in any family but ours), and doers of the before undone, and that will continue to be undone by every family except ours until the end of town.

Well, that was  an awesome introduction, and now I will bore you with all the boring facts of our boring old life gallivanting over the (yes, sometimes boring)  countryside (now isn't that boring) (I like repeating myself a lot, a lot) :)

Mum got us all out of bed very well this morning. We were all lounging around, too lazy to even think properly, when Mum said, 'Okay, first person dressed and ready gets real milk. Everyone else has to have UHT. Well, you wouldn't believe how fast we leapt out of bed!

We left quite late today from the campsite - around 8:45 I think, even including the loss of half an hour!). We're getting pretty awesomely good at packing and unpacking. No-one really has a particular job, we just go around and do what we can (well, most of do anyway - Cooper just goes around and does what he can't) :)

We actually only travelled until about midday, or a bit past. We stopped in Katherine for a restock of supplies and important staples like boiled lollies and Samboy chips (mum says you'll all think we eat terribly. I couldn't believe how many aborigines were there, when there's hardly any in Brisbane. I thought it was pretty cool. :) They all hang around in the shade in groups of ten to twenty and chat all day. Reminds me a bit of the Solomon Island people.

It's very hot here in Nitmiluk - Dad checked the forecasted temperatures for the next few days in Katherine, and each successive day has a max temp. 1 degree higher than the last.

The pool is absolutely amazing. For once, it's warm enough to swim in, which is an added bonus (I mean, the worst thing is paying for a pool at a caravan park when you can't even swim in it!). Before we even unpacked, we went to test how warm it was.

It was a great temp. Too warm water is a waste of time to bother swimming in, and too cold water is a waste of good swimming pool. The pool here is just right!

With the promise of lovely water like that, we unpacked like mad, scoffed down lunch (chicken and lettuce and mayonnaise on rolls), squeezed into our almost too tight swimming togs (Dini's are actually pretty much too small for her, but you've got to give us some slack - we haven't used them for about six months!), and pelted for the pool.

We were in there about two hours - Dini is an awesome person to swim with! We did handstands, raced each other (she got a ten second headstart. :) ), made up different ways of throwing her (you know, like make her stand on my shoulders and jump as far as she can while I jump too), and carried Cooper around. He absolutely loved it! He was constantly saying 'go there!' or 'do that!' We worked out a way where he holds on to my chin in a kind of piggy back (when he holds onto my neck, he grips so hard I can't breathe!)  and I swim around.

By the end of it, us girls' hands were as wrinkled as an old prune!

I find it hilarious though, that just last night, I was wearing winter pyjamas and three blankets in bed, and tongight I'll be wearing summer PJs and one sheet at the most!