Litchfield National Park (Wangi Falls)
Monday the 15th November 2010
We awoke this morning to the squawking of about 5 Crows, as it turns out the Cane Toad who had dearly departed the night before had been consumed by the crows, not quite the result that we had anticipated. We were trying to protect the native wild life not provide them with a poisonous feed.
We had our morning swim which turned into a meet and greet with some backpackers. Two French and one German, they all love it here and want to stay longer than there one year visa which means they have to work in either a construction or agricultural job (typically fruit picking), .After lunch with the back packers I did the walk around Wangi Falls again (about the extent of my fitness regime) and had a quick swim to the actual waterfalls and then headed for Palmerston / Darwin. Alan headed for Palmerston straight after lunch. As it turned out we both got wet by the same thunder storm, about 6-8klms out from Batchelor. But as per usual you get all your wet weather gear on and then about half an hour later its fine and hot, could set your watch by it but I broke the glass face on mine. Wildly unhappy.
After some interesting directions and personalised Tom Tom voice (thanks Mark) I arrived at the lovely home of Tanya, Mark, Kira and Arial. Mark’s car had been relegated to the outside carparking area so we could put the bikes into the garage.
I’m not sure what it is about the name Tanya but, we had another great home cooked meal compliments of our lovely host. I suspect that Tanya also thought that Alan and I were a married couple as Tanya suggested we share a queen size bed… But fortunately for me, Tanya had another bed for that room. I know I’m a great looking bloke and after a month away from Sally I’m looking even better. (And yes I’m very, very scared).
Tuesday the 16th of November 2010
Rest day sort of
We got up and then basically enjoyed the views from Tanya’s and Mark’s balcony for a while before we got motivated to get things moving. Probably the first thing about Darwin that you need to know is that it is Hot & Humid, I kinda like it, but I’m not so sure Alan is a big fan he is however a big fan of the pool though, if you can’t find him and the place that your staying in has a pool save yourself sometime and check the pool first.
We headed for Darwin proper for some lunch and sightseeing, everything around Darwin is lush and green and lots of Frangipanis (some streets are even lined with them) whilst we were out we saw the approaching thunderstorm it looked pretty big so we decided to get out of Dodge whilst we could. (We didn’t take our wet weather gear on this sightseeing expedition)
On the way back to Tanya & Marks we saw the local Harley dealer so we thought we would risk getting drenched in the impending thunder storm and pull in and have a look. The demo day looked like it had just been in town as all the demo bikes were lined up put the front. (You can tell by the sequential NSW number plates) amongst them I saw the Ultra, now that’s the way to tour Australia. Yep I know what you’re saying Mark, but I haven’t reach retirement yet!!! The local dealer also had a new sporty that they had customised for a Harley completion and let me suggest I thought it looked pretty good.
We could still see those clouds coming so we decided to bolt for shelter. Here is one of those funny things that you learn whilst touring, just before the thunderstorms actually hit there is always a really hot wind that blows in, on a bike it makes for interesting riding because it tends to be very gusty which means you get blown across lanes of traffic… Because we had previously worked out the signs we knew we had less than 5 minutes before we were going to get wet very wet, also if you looked to the left it was pitch black the landscape was in complete darkness whereas off to the right of us was glimpses of sunlight.
Thankfully we did make it back in time, sure we didn’t do any grocery shopping or the next couple of days but I think that it was better to runaway and live to fight another day was the best option. It absolutely bucketed down or at least an hour, thankfully we watched it from the shelter of the Reynold’s balcony. I must admit I’m liking the Darwin thunderstorms.
Cheers
a
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