Cooper the awesomely funny guy (our comic relief!)

Here're a few pics of Cooper. I thought you'd like to see them!
The first one is in Mt Isa (yes, I'm only now really uploading my photos onto my computer and the blog!!!)

 The second one is I don't know where, but I had to photograph it, it was soooo funny!!! (actually, it was 13/09, so in Mt Isa. :) )

30th September - to WESTERN AUSTRALIA!!!

Well, last night was fun. :) We stopped at Gregory National Park - Sullivan's Campground last night. There were three other couples in the same general area of the campground too, and would you believe? Two of them were from Brisbane! The other one family was German. (You would not believe how many German's we've met on this trip!!!! It's unbelievable!). (Only two of the three families are in this photo)

We all had a great time talking around the campfire with the other families. They were extremely informative. One guy, Mark, gave us heaps of advice on our fridge (that averages 21°C), Tunnel Creek (apparently a Must-Do), and all sorts of other things. They've been touring Australia since February, and were in Western Australia for 10 months!!! Blog for them is: bakersaway.blogspot.com (can't wait to have a look). Mark's wife, Donna, was also very informative, and she and mum put their heads together with their Camping Australia books and planned routes. :) (That Camping Australia does awesome books! Tells you every single obscure and not-so-obscure camping spot ALL over Australia!!!)

One thing Mark told us about was just how quaranitn-ing the quarantine on the border of WA is!!! You can't take fruit, vegetables, plants, flowers, or even (would you believe!!!) HONEY!!! And we have 3 HUGE JARS OF IT!!!!

Not only that, but we also had a 7 kilogram watermelon to devour! And mum discovered, among many other things, a whole packet of tomatoes! (Wouldn't believe something could hide in our puny little fridge, but there you have it).

So, dinner last night was as many vegetables as Mum could cram in our frypan, mixed with honey, and lentils. Joseph wanted to know where the meat was… :) Afternoon tea and dessert was watermelon.

Breakfast this morning was watermelon and honey on bread. We offered a jar of honey (and the watermelon) round to the other families, but they didn't take much. :( And for lunch, we plan to eat half a cucumber, half a tomato, half a carrot, and half a mango each! :) Hilarious.
Mum asked today, while she was writing her shopping list, what we needed. I said, 'watermelon?' and she replied, 'NO!' :)

We've already gone through two trays of mangoes. We LOVE them! :) Every now and then we come across a little store on the side of the road, and we buy a tray. :)

We just drove past Joe Creek. Mum took a photo of Jo in front of it. :) The big mountains around there are amazing!! They're red and huge and very impressively layered. We took a few photos. :)

Something else we've been informed about this week is that Lake Argylle (no idea how it's spelt...) is a MUST see, so we're going to try and head out that direction as well. :) Nice having all these helpful hints!

Right now we're at a petrol station, which has internet. Every time that happens (there's internet, I mean), it's like, QUICK!!! HURRY!!! POST THE BLOG POSTS!!! CHECK EMAILS!!! QUICK!!!! (It's hilarious! :) )

29th September - from Douglas Daly, to who knows where?

There are two things to explain before I start. Firstly, I didn’t post yesterday because my laptop was out of battery, we didn't have a powered site in Litchfield, we were driving all day yesterday, we didn't have a powered site in Daly Waters, and I couldn't find my charger (which, when all's said and done, is reason enough by itself. :) ) And secondly, I named this post strangely because we've just been in Katherine for 2 hours, it is now 3:27 pm, and we honestly have no idea where we're going tonight… :) Which is fun over here, but isn't that informative for all you guys over there. ;P

Anyway, I have to tell you the funniest thing that happened last night (which was in Douglas Daly Tourist Park):

Joe was on washup duty, and I was on Keeping Joseph Company and Watching Joe's Laptop While It Charges In The Bathroom Because We Don't Have A Powered Site To Charge It Ourselves duty. :)

I was reading my Agatha Christie book ('Lord Edgware Dies', for those of you who are sticklers for details), so I didn't notice Joe's run for the loo. I only looked up when he walked toward me practically cracking up laughing. Then he told me all about his trip to the loo. He went into the first cubicle, lifted the lid, and… saw a big green frog in the loo!!!

He decided his best bet would be to flush it down the S-bend (as you do), but after the waves died down, back crawled the frog! Joseph figured he'd reward that persistence and leave it in peace, so off he goes to the next cubicle.

Would you believe it!?! In the next cubicle (although not in the loo), were TWO HUGE CANE TOADS!!! WHOPPERS!

I think it was then that Joseph decided maybe it wouldn't be so bad to brave the green tree frog, so back he goes to the first loo (there were only two loos for miles around). As he was glaring into the bowl at this bad froggie, he figures he'd rather brave the cane toads than squat on that frog-infested loo and expose his backside to who knows what!?! So back he goes to the second loo, and spends a few seconds glaring at those two fat cane toads, the cause of all his strife (well, most of it, anyway). Then he waves his arms, kick his legs, screams 'hai-yee!!!!!' and somehow scares those toads enough to high-tail it out of there.

With a huge sigh of relief, he sank onto the Seat of Grace. But his troubles were not yet over…

As he was finishing his toilet, a mozzie decided he'd be good pickings (no idea why - everyone knows there's not a skinnier body around), zoned in on his meatiest (and most exposed) section - his backside - and chomped down - hard.

Well, after that experience, I don't think Jo was really keen to go back… Whatever the case, it cracked me up.

There're a few hilarious signs around here, like 'WE LIKE OUR LIZARDS FRILLED, NOT GRILLED' or, a few hundred kilometers out of Mt Isa, 'MACDONALDS MT ISA - 465km. WORTH THE WAIT'. (that really cracked us up). But I think the funniest ever was the one we saw today, complete with a huge red splat:

 'NO BELT, NO BRAINS'.

27th September - to Litchfield National Park

Well, we're really getting around! We've been up to the top of Oz, and now we're heading back down. Tonight's Litchfield (for a night of two). We've got less than two weeks to get across to Broome - we have to be there by ninth October so I can catch my plane home! (I have to go home for school next term)

Anyway, it was quite a job packing up this morning. We got up before 7:00 (a record at the moment), and ended up leaving after 9:00!!! Makes me feel like a reptile - slow to warm up!

We also hosed down the caravan today. You would not believe how much red dust was caked on it! And it doesn't even hose off - you have to scrub every square inch to get it off! It was much easier than scrubbing off fish oil, but I wasn't happy about getting soaking wet again!

We've been getting chips in the back windscreen from rocks bouncing off the caravan front and onto the windscreen. Dad's alternative was to tape a huge piece of carpet (yes, we do carry carpet around!) to the windscreen! I think it's a great alternative, but… Mum just discovered a chip in the front windscreen too! It was tiny, only a few millimetres across, but it's grown now - it's now about a centimetre long.  Mum and dad spent ages on the side of the road ringing people to fix it. Pity carpet couldn't help!

We drove to a repair place, and they had a look at it, and, can you believe it!?!

It had already been repaired! The repair guys said it was a crack, but that someone had already fixed it, and it was okay!

Some may say that the people who owned it before us probably fixed the old crack, and that mum was mistaken in thinking it had grown, but I think God probably fixed it on the way! How cool is that!?!

We also drove through Batchelor today. There's a huge model castle there, made out of concrete, that's a replica of a castle in Bohemia. The guy who made it actually died with the waterwheel for the castle under his bed! I found that weird…

We arrived in Litchfield for lunch. We were going to camp where we had lunch, but it was for tents only. :( There was also a plunge pool nearby, about a kilometre away - our third in about a week! We went swimming there, which was heaps of fun! Dad and I went under the waterfall. It felt like hail, and behind the waterfall was like a snowstorm! :)

I wasn't game enough to wear my glasses under the waterfall (I usually wear them while swimming, otherwise I can't see!), so I had to leave them with mum. I couldn't believe how many rocks I crashed into without my glasses! And I couldn't see a thing half the time. I'll have to get another eye appointment when I get home next month…

By far the funniest thing at the plunge pool today was to do with the fish.

At the plunge pool there were masses (and masses!) of HUGE black fish! There were a few about 10cm long, and HEAPS about 30cm long!! We couldn't believe the number and size of them! Not only that, but although there were a lot of people there, they were still flocking to a particular shallow place near the edge (must be where all the food is…). We'd stand still in the water for a bit, and before you knew it, there'd be a huge school of big black fish around you! Oskar was a bit freaked out, I think…

Anyway, Dini had her goggles with her, and she said it was very cool to see the fish underwater. I took my glasses off and put on her goggles, and had a look. It was very cool! :P But unfortunately, without my glasses, I couldn't see so well… Then Mum suggested I put my glasses on top. And would you believe it!?! it WORKED! I could now not only see underwater, but I could see WELL!!! It was unattractive (and amusing for some), but very practical. :) Almost beats contact lenses and goggles. Almost, but not quite…

Cooper is very demanding at the moment - he'll say, 'turn the tape on!' or, when we got in the car after swimming, demand, 'turn the air-con on!' He gets the lingo from us, adds his own little accent to it, and blasts it back at us with the force of a train. It sounds funny written down, but something like that coming from a three-year-old is a bit disturbing…  :)

We arrived at the campground this afternoon - it's called Wangi Falls (whoever named this place should be shot - what kind of a name is that!?!)

After setting up (which involved the usual, as well as Dad setting up a very long clothesline that is half in the bushes, and unuseable, and also spraying the big green mat with ant-rid to try and reduce the massive number of ants that flocked here the moment we arrived), we headed off to the water hole. I love these things! They're so much better than a swimming pool, because there's so many different nooks and crannies. Also, every day, we're off to a different one!

This one was very much commercialised (is that the right word?)- there were handrails and steps into the water!

We all (except Cooper. :) ) swam over to the other side, which had two waterfalls. There was a small but very deep pool in the side of the rock - it was like a Jacuzzi! The rock there was freakishly weird and amazing - it was like gold! It's hard to describe, but it was REALLY shiny, and silvery-gold, and looked almost like it was made from metal. From the other side, the rock just looked like normal red rock, but up close, it looked like something from a sci-fi film! (Help Grandad! - any idea what it is???)

I was just climbing down the last time to swim back, when I stuck my hand near a crevice, and…

ALMOST TOUCHED A SNAKE!!! I think I actually screamed. It was silvery green on top, with a thin black diamond patter, and light brown on the bottom. I think it was actually very long (no idea how long), but it was all coiled up. Its head was about the size of a marble, and its body was, at thickest, as thick as your fourth finger. Any ideas, anyone???

I wasn't risking it though, even if it looked harmless. Although it wasn't in the water, it looked like there was no other way to where it was but through the water! I stood there a while, then worked my way a-rooouuund it, sloooowwwly…

:)

Cooper stripped off for the walk back to the caravan. All he was wearing was his little rubber Bob the Builder sandals. :) And he's not a walker, he's a runner. He runs EVERYWHERE! And he can run FOREVER too! You can imagine what it was like walking past the massive school camp with him too… (there's a school camp of about 50 people here in Wangi Falls too)

We cam eup with many names for him on the way back:

• Nude Dude (from mum)

• Forest Streaker (dad)
• The Raw Bushwalker (mum and dad) - my fave! :)

We also thought of a few tales to tell:

• He has leeches in the unmentionables (the boys)

• The Forest Streaker strikes again (dad)

• Return of the original Greek Olympics - except for the rubber shoes… (mum)

• Man with the plan ad the big butt span (Joseph)

• The Call of Nude-ture (me)

Then he decided to take off his shoes, so he was starkers!

I thought of making a movie, but I didn't have my camera. It was such a disappointment!

Cooper really is the comic relief for us!!! :)

26th September - in Darwin

We've been here four nights now (well tonight is the 4th night). This is officially an Australia Trip Record - the LONGEST TIME SPENT IN ANY ONE PLACE! We've stayed here twice as long as in any other place! Wow! It's been so good thought. We've slept some, relaced some, and had a great time, and we're ready to get back on the road again tomorrow. :)

I just got back from having a shower - you have no idea how refreshing a shower is after being battered and bruised by the unrelenting heat and evil little sandflies that make huge white lumps on your skin and leave you needing to scratch on every inch of skin, but despairing at your lack of fingernails… :( It's unpleasant.

But the depressing part of a shower is having to get out of it. You see, the very second you turn the cold tap off and start drying yourself off, the heat creeps back and your skin feels like someone just poured honey down your back, it's so slimy.

Not a nice picture, I know, but that's the way it is here in Darwin.

There's a cute little green tree frog jammed in the corner under the sink in the bathrooms here. It's been there about a day. Cooper and I discovered it. He was ecstatic. :)

Before the shower was dinner - pies, potato, veggies, and plenty of tomato sauce. Maryanne (did I mention that we have friends who live up here? Maryanne's the mum) reckoned Joseph needed fattening up (just kidding), so she gave him two meat pies to eat (he LOVES them!), so he ate both of them today, as well as the pies for dinner - three in all!!! Hungry chap. :)

I washed the car today - it really needed it! You wouldn't believe how much dirt, mud, and even rocks and bits of bark were jammed every which way in cracks in the car! Just behind the back window is a little vent, and as I hosed it, big rocks came out! I couldn't believe it!!! Dad had greased the whole car with fish oil before we left (and it stank for weeks! It was even deodorized, and it still stank!). He'd sprayed in so much, it oozed down the sides of the car under the doors!! Eeww!! And I had to clean off the big oily drips on the white paint! Let me tell you, after that, the rag I was using was totally black, slimy, and all stuck together. Gross!

A guy actually walked past as I was washing it and said that, for 5 bucks, I could do his. :)

We've been having a great time with the family up here. The eighteen-year-old girl is in the middle of exam block, so she can't hang around much, poor thing. But Maryanne can.

The first night we were here, Friday, she took me to their youth group. I met heaps of lovely people. They're all super, super nice up here! We played human battleships, which was fun. I met a girl who'se going to India this Wednesday for a few weeks for a mission trip! Wow!

And the best bit about the youth group was… the COLD WATER!!! (nah, just kidding). But really, I think cold water has a taste of its own - and IT-IS-GOOD! I would have drunk the whole water cooler-full, except cold water really burns your mouth...

Saturday, she took us all to the wavepool in the middle of Darwin city. It cracked me up - mum was driving, and we got to the city, and mum said, 'is that it!?!' incredulously! It's tiny compared to Brisbane. :)

The wavepool, a multimillion dollar investment, was heaps of fun - we 'sailed' for several hours in the big donut floaty things over the waves. Dini, Dom, Jo, Oskar and I all sat in one, joined hands in a circle, and rode the roughest waves all the way in! That was heaps of fun, but I think one boy we didn't even know got particularly annoyed… He yelled at us to, 'just go away!' But Mum said to not worry, so we didn't. :)

We had dinner with the other family at their house too. I made the packet mix cheesecake in the icecream box again, but we forgot it. :(

The family took us to the nearby park, where there're two big hills that are GR8 to slide down on cardboard! Even Cooper went down - he was so cute!!! Sadly, every time dad sent him down, he cried, but when mum took over, he was deliriously happy every time he went down the hill!!! Shows mums just have the knack…

Dinner at their place was yum yum for my tum tum - hamburgers! With Kangaroo! (I didn't even know until Dad told me as we were driving home…)

The family introduced us to Roomba, the awesomely cool new gadget that vacuums your home by itself! We were facinated by her artful, sweeping (literally) moves, her graceful turns as she sucked your floor to blissful whiteness…

Except she needs a lot of maintenance - like a baby. You have to change her nappy (the rollers), keep her out of trouble (clear the floor), put up those baby blocks (would you believe they have a 'virtual wall' that comes with the vacuum cleaner!?!), and heaps of other things!

Cool, but too much work for us!

Yesterday we went to their church at Darwin Baptist. I think it has three services a day! (considerably bigger than ours in Brisbane…) We sang some really cool songs - some we knew, and plenty we didn't know! One of them was especially cool - 'All To Us' by Chris Tomlin and three others I can't remember… Grandad, you should look it up! :)

The sermon was about the mission field, and how you don't have to be in central africa to be a missionary. The pastor said there were several important elements - integrity (which I think is almost the most important - to act what you speak), love, compassion, and several others I have trouble remembering…

In the afternoon we went to the museum, which I have to say is considerably better than the one in the city in Brisbane. There was stuff all about sweetheart, the massive crocodile that terrorised many a boat and ended up drowning (even though crocs can hold their breath for up to one and a half hours), Cyclone Tracey (that was freaky), and heaps of aboriginal paintings - some of these looked at first just like a boring pattern, but when you got close, you saw it was a seriously complicated, amazingly done, beautiful pattern repeated over and over again. Some of those paintings must have taken months!

Dad also went to the army museum (no idea what it's called) with Jo and Dom. Did you know that Darwin was bombed 64 times during WWII??? And NOONE EVERY HEARS ABOUT IT!!! WHY!?!?!?!?

I have no idea, but Dad was fascinated. One of the worst, most sick things he found out in the museum was this:

The people of Darwin took the guns they'd used to shoot the Japanese, and sold them to the Japanese as scrap metal!!! Whoa!

Well, This weekend's been great fun, but I think today, Monday, tops them all - we went to see the crocodiles jumping! To tell you the truth, although we went to the original one, and paid a fortune for it, and ended up with an hour's worth of wimpy little, half-warmed up crocs flopping around for their food (okay, it wasn't quite that bad), we had a really good time.  It's quite scary to see those massive crocs up so close! The male crocs fight, so half of them were missing legs. The croc jumping company even has names for all of them! Like Chase, Scarface, and so on. None of them jumped clear out of the water, but we did get a good show. There were a few fights to see, too, because a lot of crocs came into territory that didn't belong to them (for the food), and crocs get very nervous when there's another in the vicinity! We also saw quite a few hungry birds circling around to get the pork the brave woman was feeding the crocs - whistling kites, and another type of kite, and another type of bird as well. :) Apparently the whistling kites are pyromaniacs - they wait at the edge of bushfires to eat all the escaping animals. When that fire burns out, they pick up a burning stick, take it somewhere else, and set that on fire too, to draw out more animals!!!! Scary for the firemen!!!  :)

We're heading in the direction of WA after this - crossing the border will be a first for all of us this time! WOW! Apparently, you're not allowed to take any fresh fruit, etc over the border!

Katie's awesome encyclopaedia of Kakadu

Well, I figured I was going to forget everything I've learnt in Kakadu, so I wrote down a list of all the things I've been learning. I'm still adding to it too! :)

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).

Day 9 - to Kakadu

'Some people say turtle tastes like chicken. I say it tastes like turtle.'

'There's a toilet up the back here. It doesn't have a star rating, not even half a star, but it does the job.'

'If you get that sinking feeling, do you know where the exit points are? Over the side.'

'Don't jump over the front of the boat, you'll end up with a bad haircut.'

'You'll feel a bit of a bump as we land be cause I still have my learners and don't know how to drive yet.'

'Don't eat too many white apples, because no matter how fast you run, you'll never make it.'

These are just a few of the hilariously funny things the cruise guide said yesterday on the cruise up the gorges. We were in tears of laughter almost the whole way. :)

Well, although we wanted to stay another night in Nitmiluk, Dad and Mum decided we had to move on again. :( We went swimming again this morning, thought. Cooper's hilarious - you know what happens to your fingers when you swim a long time? They end up looking like an apple that's spent too long in an oven. Cooper loves it when his fingers do that. He looks down at them and says, 'oh, winkly!' (you know how he has trouble pronouncing the 'r'!)/

Talking about the pool and Cooper, yesterday we went swimming, and Cooper had his cute little togs on (little red undies with a dark blue fish long sleeved shirt), and his tog undies were falling down. I said, 'Cooper, your pants are falling down!' He said what?' then looked down at his undies, then said, 'oh, yeah!'

We're off to Kakadu today. On the way to Katherine from Nitmiluk (we needed some more stores), we saw a hospital, nursing home and cemetery all within 100 meters of each other. I guess they've got you covered. :)

We stopped at Woolworths - did you know they've got 8c off per litre at the woolies petrol stations just this weekend? There was a Target. there as well, but it was called 'Target Country', and was about a quarter of the size of the 'normal' ones. :)

We stopped at Edith Falls next. Mum and Dad got us all moving, eating lunch, putting our sneakers on, and heading off on a 2km round walk. None of us were particularly enthusiastic, least of all Joseph, but the walk was a huge success! We went to the Edith Falls Upper Pool. The 1km there seemed more like 2 or 3km - you'd turn a corner, expecting to finally see water, and there'd me more walking track! It was depressing, but finally we got there. The water was cold at first, but amazingly refreshing! There was a huge hole that looked like a 1m diameter yabbie pump went through the rock. It was about 2m deep, and near the bottom was another hole that came out back into the water hole. It was very cool, but I wasn't brave enough (or dumb enough) to risk my life in it. :)

We meta  family of six - mum, dad, two boys and two girls. They have a blog called Lange's on Tour. They've been going around Australia for eighteen months! Wow! They intended to only go for a year, but ended up going for two years.  :)

We also drove through Pine Creek today. There were some really whopper sized light brown ants nests - and by whopper, I mean whopper! We've seem masses about waist-height and thin as my dad, but these are absolutely GINORMOuS! They're amazing too, because of they way they're shaped - they're actually narrow at the bottom, fat in the middle, and spikey up top. And the place's they've 'grown'! There were two or three grown around a wooden fence, and heaps growing in the middle of a fenced field! I mean, do the people round there have any warning one's going to spring up? And how long do the ants take to make them?

Cooper is like the comic relief around here. Every now and then, Mum gets out the bottle of boiled sweets we keep in the car for long trips. The moment Cooper sees it, he starts saying, loudly, very fast, and until he gets one: 'can we have one? Can we have one? Can we have one?' Except from him, it sounds more like, 'cwiveun? Cwievun? And means more like, 'give me one now or I'll shoot you!'

We've been reading the bible as a family together every time we have a day driving in the car (which is most days). Today we read from Esther, the part where Haman goes to ask the king to hang Mordecai (which, funnily enough, mum couldn't pronounce properly. :) ). There were a lot of really interesting parts in there.

For example, it's really interesting how Mordecai wouldn't accept clothes from Esther, but he was happy to be dressed by Haman as a reward for saving the king. Mum reckoned he was probably so gobstoppered surprised he just let him, but who knows? Maybe God gave him some warning! :)

Also, it's quite interesting how both Haman and the king had trouble sleeping/didn't sleep at all the night after Esther's big banquet. I wonder how good the food was?

Another intersting thing is how dramatically Haman's wife, Zeresh, and her friends' opinions changed after Haman paraded Mordecai in the streets. The first night, they were all supportive of Haman hanging Mordecai on the gallows, but the next day, when Haman came home with his head covered in shame, they just shook their heads and said the battle of Haman vs Mordecai would most surely fall in Mordecai's favour. What kind of supportive wife is she!?!

The most amazing thing in the book of Esther is that although God's name is never mentioned, his hand is very visible in the whole story, especially where timing is concerned. Just think, if the king hadn't been unable to sleep, he wouldn't have had the chronicles read to him. If he hadn't had them read, he wouldn't have heard about Mordecai, and asked about his reward, and discovered there had been none. And, if that had happened  maybe half an hour earlier, BEFORE Haman came into the palace to talk to the king… Well, not only would Haman not have had to parade ordecai in the streets (an amazing turning of the tables! Remember, Haman had come to the palace in the first place to ask for Mordecai to be hanged!), but after that, Haman would have come in, asked for Mordecai to be hanged, and who knows what might have happened? It actually says, in Esther 6:4, that 'Haman had just entered the courtyard.' (Holy Bible, emphasis mine). The perfect timing in this book is unbelievable! Who else could have planned it so perfectly?

Day 8 - in Nitmiluk

Today's the same sort of day as the one that commenced the Harry Potter series in book 1 - windows flung wide open to entice a non-existent breeze, women and guys (including the fat ones) wearing bikinis and speedos that aren't big enough to clothe a flea, and every self respecting person staying well in the shade - you look out and you can't even see a single lost, toddling child.

In a caravan park, where your house consists of one room big enough to contain half the people you brought with you, some of these things are slightly impossible, but still, people do the best they can.

Us six kids are just sitting around, waiting for the all clear to go swimming (right now, it's the middle of the day and any swimmer is just asking for a shiny red face that blends in as well as an elephant in a bowl of custard). At least, most of us are. Oskar's rolling around on the floor, treating this inability to swim like a sever case of cramps. Anyone would think, from the amount of noise he's making, that someone's trying to pull his nails out or something.

But he's just voicing what the rest of us feel - that right now, the swimming pool looks like a precious jewel, the one and only in a thousand, that will buy you life, fortune, and anything (and everything) else you could ever dream of.

We just came back from a two hour cruise up the first two gorges of Nitmiluk. It was really interesting, and I took a lot of photos! We even 'cruised' into a cave for a few minutes!

The cruise guide told us about some of the useful trees that the aboriginals use. There's the Mataluka (at least I think that's what it's called…) who's leaves act as an insect repellent, an antiseptic, and good for colds and coughs!

There's also the freshwater mangrove, which I think is very cool. If you take the bark and leaves, stick them in a cloth bag, and let it float in the middle of a billabong (i.e. somewhere where the water doesn't go out or in), the leaves and bark will suck all the oxygen out of the water! Aborigines do this so all the fish float to the top when they can't breathe anymore, then pick off what they need! How amazingly awesome is that! God has pretty cool ideas, I think. :) The aborigines then let their kids play in the water to reoxygenate it, and the fish swim away again as if nothing happened. :) Very cool. What's also very cool is that the aborigines actually worked that out.

It was really nice and cool on the water. We saw a huge cliff named after some guy called Jedda (apparently the cliff that Jedda jumped off in a movie). The cruise guide said he thinks they're making a sequel to that movie, called the Return of the Jedda… :) haha.

Mum and Dad are enjoying this place so much, they're seriously considering staying another night again! Which would make this the longest stay on our trip so far! A whole three nights. :)

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!