Litchfield and Darwin...and finally, air conditioning!

Well hello. And after a few weeks of back to work drearyness finally we did something of interest that I can post about on the blog!

To start off, let me just clarify that work hasn't been all that bad. I have been in communication with the good people of PCA Kingaroy. Not anymore though, I have a new job starting in exactly a week, with the Roper Gulf Shire Council. It should be a great experience. It is a six month contract, so it looks like we will be in Katherine for a while!

Caleb's job is going well as well - still getting a feel for the workshop. He's working with a good bunch of people though, which is always a plus!

So, I'm not sure how much a lot of you know about our air con debarcle. Basically it a was a whole lot of 'Should we, shouldn't we'? To put air con in properly cost a pretty penny, let me tell you! Due to the size of our van, which is really really small, the cheaper choices were not really an option due to 1) a lack of free space and 2) not wanting a huge thing sticking out the side creating bad wind resistance and a dangerous hazard of falling and breaking and costing even more money...so cutting that boring story short, we found out our friends Brian and Debbie would be in Darwin last weekend, and thought, we're going up anyway, its getting hot, lets get air con while we are there!

Saturday included lots of fun and laughs exploring Litchfield NP. It's about an hour from Darwin and Simply Beautiful. A great place to swim as well! An extremely different experience to going to Kakadu - where there was a lot of cultural experiences, birdlife to spot and driving....Litchfeild is smaller, and the waterfalls are more easily accessible. Due to some recent spattering of rain (no where near as much as Kingaroy and the rest of the south east I hear...) everything was greened up. The only problem? way way too many tourists....

There was also a really interesting piece of history. We visited the Blyth Homestead, which is an original building, an out post of Sargent Station. Inside was a whole lot of info about the family that ran the station, and goodness gracious, those pioneers did it tough! Here was me complaining about the flies (as they were back on assault...grrr...) and the heat, reading about this family of ten or so, getting up at ridiculous hours, working 15 hours a day at the tin mines, having hands squashed and making pets out of crocodiles...yeah, it was intense...needless to say I shut up pretty quick!

The termite mounds were also noteworthy. Now, I know this was a place my family visited on their great big holiday, as we used to call it (when I was about 5...so I don't remember much). BUT I do remember the photo Dad wanted of our landcruiser in between two great big magnetic termite mounds (please let this be the correct photo!!) I found it quite amusing that the termite mounds are now fenced off and you can't even walk there....you can only look at them from a distance....My how the times change....

After we were finished exploring Litchfield we drove on to Darwin where we met up with Brian and Debbie who were staying with their daughter. We had a great time, and really appreciated Lacey's hospitality. We went to the Mindal Beach markets and watched the sunset on the beach. Great times. Did I mention we were eating Thai food? We were eating Thai food. Really good Thai food. (That encouraged me to attempt another curry..hopefully its not too hot!)

The next day we left our van with the air con people, and explored the Darwin Military Museum. This was fantastic - did you know Darwin was bombed in 64 raids between 1942-43? 253 people lost their lives, and Darwin was just flattened! Our generation can't begin to imagine a war that affected the entire world...it really was right on our doorstep, with raids spreading as fair inland as Katherine. Wow. Hopefully we will get to see more of the military history. The Stuart Hwy (between Darwin and Katherine...it goes further as well) is lined with WWII air fields.

So that was our exciting weekend. Air con in, we slept while shivering last night, which was a nice change from sweating...saw some friends from back home, some great places and learnt about one of the more dramatic events in our nation's history. Great! hopefully, the adventures to continue...