swimming and exploring days

Friday 24/9/2010

tues - left for Rum Jungle near Litchfield National Park.
wed - Litchfield N.P. where we saw magnetic termite mounds. We have been seeing lots of termite mounds, but these ones were flat. They build them so they can go to different parts of the mound, depending on the time of day and how hot it is. Then we went for a bit of a drive down a four wheel drive track and drove through a water crossing where there were crocodiles, but we didn't see any. The track was too corrugated and Daddy was worried the car was going to shake apart, so we turned around after a while and went back through the water. We still didn't see a crocodile. From there we went to Wangi Falls, where we had a picnic lunch, then walked down to the waterfalls. There were millions and trillions of people swimming in the pool under the falls, but we didn't bring our swimmers, because we were told there were crocodiles in all the water in Litchfield N.P. (this one is checked at the start of the dry to see if any got in during the wet season and then it's safe to swim for the whole dry season. Wish they'd told us that earlier - ed) We walked up to the tree-top lookout. It was at the top of the very tall palm trees. It took a long time to get up there. There were lots of bats in the trees. They were waving their wings like a fan, to keep cool. It was steep and very hard work and it was very hot, but it was worth it in the end because it was a lot of fun. When we came down, we went and dipped our feet in the water at the falls. The water was nice. When we got back to the caravan park we decided to pack up and go to Darwin. The night before there were lots of cane toads and they were very gross, so we hopped there wasn't any in Darwin.
Mummy and Daddy started to pack up the camper, but it wouldn't go down. Daddy finally got it to go down and we drove to Darwin. When we got there Daddy tried to wind up the camper and half way up it went TWANG, CRUNCH, THUD! and came back down! Something broke! Daddy spent three hours fixing it while we played and lay on cushions outside. Mum was worried that it would fall down again and I was a little bit worried too. We went to bed and it didn't fall down. Yet!
thurs - We went into the city of Darwin so Mum and Daddy could buy a coffee. We walked around the city until it was time to come back for a swim. On our way to the pool, we passed the giant jumping pillow, so we had a go. It was good fun because you could bounce really high and it was fun to run on and Claire kept falling over. We went to the big pool, not the one near our camper and it was shallow enough at one end that even Claire could stand up. There was a waterfall that we stood underneath. Mum went to the sunset markets with Molly and we went for another swim in the closer pool, but nobody but Dad could stand up in it.
fri - this morning we went to meet two friends of Mum's. They both have little girls born the same time as Claire. It wasn't so exactly exciting for me and Claire wouldn't speak, but Mum had a good time and I took a photo of her with her friends. We're back at the camper now, but we are going to Crocodylus Park soon! I want to see lots of crocodiles!