Kristy's Chat - Darwin

Both my primary school and secondary school have long since been demolished making the chance of a school reunion highly unlikely.  I imagine reunions to be quite a daunting occasion, I was anxious enough catching up with Woody, a long lost friend from Gully Tech when we were in Gladstone.  He instructed us to stay with his wife and kids in Darwin and with the budget coping a battering the prospect was just too good to refuse.  However the question was always in my mind, “What if none of us get along at all”.  There will be that awkward moment of trying to leave before schedule, the kids may fight, the adults may fight and worst of all Chris may learn something of my past!  Thankfully this was not the case, Nicky was just gorgeous and we all got along brilliantly.  The Woods welcomed us into their house and shared all that they had with us.  As a result we left behind more than our usual collection of empty bottles.

I love Darwin.  It’s beautiful.  I’d shift there in a minute if it wasn’t for one little problem.  Wildlife, and when I say wildlife I emphasise WILD.  Anyone who knows me knows how much I love my sport, in particular long distance running.  Sadly as the heat has increased the opportunity to run has decreased.  However on my first morning in Darwin we had a good cover of cloud and the temp was only 30degrees.  Off I headed for a quick 5km run.  45 minutes later Chris rang to check if I was OK.  It turns out that the map I gauged my run on was not to scale.  I ended up running 10km and the cloud cover had cleared within 10minutes of me leaving the house.  Now I’d be happy to cope with all that if it wasn’t for the bloody snakes.  One struck at me from the roadside and 50m up the road I had to hurdle another as it sunned itself on the bitumen.  Further on I located a lovely little lagoon and was tempted to cool off.  It was only when I returned to the house that Nicky told me that the authorities had removed two large salties from the lagoon earlier in the year.  Lesson learnt, when in Darwin, increase drinking, decrease running.

Full of tourist activities, it was hard to decide where to start in Darwin.  Day one was rapid fire tourist campaign.  Off to the pool and waterslides (all free, apparently as a deterrent to the tourists swimming in the lagoons or beaches, people getting eaten by crocs and sharks is no good for tourism).  We dried off and headed to the museum which was fantastic.  The kids loved the cyclone Tracy exhibit and I loved the photo display of indigenous communities.  Our third leg of the day took us to the Mindil Beach Market.  This market is well known by tourists all across Aust.  As far as markets go it wasn’t anything brilliant but it had certain other drawcards.  Firstly it’s set on the beach so snow cones in hand we head to the beach to watch the most amazing sunset in the company of literally thousands of other people.  Wander back into the market and we’re greeted by the smell of a thousand cultures all cooking at once and it’s delicious.  The kids all headed off in different directions, Ry went for seafood, Taz decided Indian smelt best, Chris went Greek, Taj tried Asian tofu and I settled on Indian.  Just as we were leaving one of my holiday dreams was realised.  The rodeo was in town and I was prepared to move heaven and hell to get there.

Now for those of you who have been following our blogs you’ll be familiar with our frustration over landing the elusive big barra.  At this point I’m convinced that it’s a mythical creature that doesn’t actually exist.  SO with very little enthusiasm we head out in search of this aboriginal dreamtime icon once again.  We’ve even been given a lesson by a professional and been provided with the best lures but still I’m not convinced.  We draw straws and Taj is handed the rod first.  Twenty minutes later and nothing.  Ry took over, nothing. He hands it to Taz, no luck. Taz passes it to Chris and finally he lands a 65cm Barra.  We’re stoked.  Enthusiasm restored I cast in, it’s so quiet that Taz joins me.  Now we have two lines in which can be dangerous because as Ry can confirm snagged lures will penetrate your shin deeply when they are released.  Just as I’m ready to give up Taz and I both hook up at the exact same time.  The fight is glorious.  Taz’s little spaghetti arms were pulled to the limit as she tussled with her catch.  What a relief to finally get them up on the beach.  Ry knew he was just moments away from his first big catch.  He cast in but nothing. Under his breath he started mumbling things that I refuse to print.  Finally he hooks up and pulls it in with relative ease.  The profanities that boy used don’t bear mentioning as he summed up his catch.  It was 50cm smaller than my catch and barely put up a fight.  That was it, no more fishing for Ry. 

 Taj was next to hook up and our excitement lifted immediately.  Poor Taj was almost pulled into the water as the barra took off.  So with me acting as his anchor he worked the rod until his 65cm catch lay gasping on the bank.  Ry continued to swear in the background.  Light was fading and we offered Ry the last cast of the day.  He begrudgingly accepted cursing about fish the entire time.  At the highest point of drama Ry finally hooked up on literally the last cast of the day. A seven minute tug of war ensued and as God is my witness I promise I would have jumped in and wrestled the beast myself if it looked like getting away.  Finally Chris got a hold of the line and beached the 68cm fish.  Although not the biggest fish, in my eyes it was the catch of the day.  We couldn’t slap the smile off Ry’s face; he probably did deserve a slapping though after all that swearing.

With my cowboy hat firmly in place we headed to the Noonamah Rodeo.  I was so excited, ohhh all those rugged cowboys, beautiful horses and deadly beasts, I was in heaven.  I even drank XXXX from a Noonamah stubby holder.  The crowd starter was a group of boys doing tricks on their motorbikes, “big deal” I yelled “bring out the cowboys”.  I was not disappointed.  The amateurs and juniors were first and we watched young man after young man get pummelled by these 600kg bulls.  Finally we had an 8sec ride.  We were all on our feet screaming.  Yeeeehah, my inner cowgirl was released.  The big fellas came on a little later and the action increased, still very few 8sec rides but these bulls seemed even angrier if that’s at all possible.  As the competition closed in four riders were in the running to win.  In their last round three out of the four went home in an ambulance.  Tough gig!  What a night, another bucket list item ticked off.

Crocosaurus Cove provided us with a brilliant day out.  It has a fantastic hands on approach and encourages the kids to get up and personal with all sorts of Australian natives.  The kids had a ball fishing for crocs (even at 18mths old their predator instinct is impressive).  They fed varieties of turtles that they never even knew existed.  They watched archer fish shoot their dinner out of thin air.  They got close and personal with massive crocs but the highlight was watching them swim in the tank with all the baby crocs that were desperate to eat them.

So Darwin is done and dusted.  We survived the wildlife, we conquered the elusive barra (he was delicious by the way) and we got the Patrol all sorted for the second half of our lap around Australia.  We bid farewell to the beach views and look forward to beautiful views of mountain ranges and floodplains.

Ry Darwin-Kununurra

Kakadu was awesome!!! We stayed at the best caravan park because it had a massive pool and spa, lots of shade, great green grass, lots of lizards and funny dingoes that stole everything. At the caravan park Tamsyn, Taj and I made a cubby and there was a lizard with a fluoro yellow stripe down its body and he always tilted his head sideways and let us sit right next to him, he was like a pet.

We went on some walks that had lots of Aboriginal art on the rocks. The aboriginal paintings were great, my favourite was the one about Lightening Man Spirit. There were paintings that aboriginals believe the spirits did because they were on the roof of a cave and no one could get there. There was also heaps of butterflies everywhere in the caves. On the second walk we did Taj didn’t bring shoes so I lent him mine and I walked in bare feet. At the top there were some amazing views of the wetlands and all the cliffs and caves.

We also went to a place called Cahill’s Crossing. When we got there, there was some aboriginal people fishing and they were bringing in catfish after catfish after catfish. The dad though didn’t catch anything on lures. The aboriginals were great; they told us how to catch the fish and the best bait. They were funny because there were crocs everywhere and they didn’t really care. At one time when the lady was bringing in another catfish, one of the crocs chased it and the lady yelled at the croc and called it a cheeky one. She said she thought the croc was after her, not the catfish. They still just sat about 5 metres from the river’s edge. The next day we went back again with our friends the Fosters, but we were not allowed to use bait we had to use lures. We were there just before high tide again and there were just a few crocs but as the tide changed there was heaps and they were all circling up the fish and eating them. In one spot we could see 10 crocs, 1 croc kept coming up close eyeing us off wanting to eat us. It was awesome. The only bad thing was we still hadn’t caught a barra.

After leaving Kakadu we went to a friend’s house, Woody’s, in Darwin. When we arrived Mia the husky was standing at the door and we jumped straight out of the car and played with her. In Darwin we did lots of great things.

We went to a market where we got really big snow cones, mine  was a rainbow one. We watched the sunset on the beach, while we were waiting we made sandcastles on the beach and watched the waves come in and knock them over. The sunset was beautiful. After the sunset I got some calamari and then we watched a street performer. He juggled fire and turned a skipping rope into a fire rope. At the end he was juggling really sharp machetes. We also saw Rock Salt (the bull) at the market and he was going to be the main attraction at the rodeo we were going to. We got to feed him and he didn’t seem very mean.

Right in the middle of Darwin there was a place called Crocosaurus with lots of crocodiles and other animals. My favourite animals were the turtles. My favourite was the pink striped turtles. We got to feed the turtles by giving them meat; I fed all the different types.  We got to feed some crocodiles with fishing rods. The crocs could jump out of the water and take the bait. It was cool. We were even brave enough to swim in a pool with them. I also liked it when they feed all the fish. When the swordfish came up to feed they would saw the fish in half.



In the Croc Tank.. this may hurt!

In Darwin we went barra fishing again in a river and finally we caught some barra. We caught 6 barra. I caught 2, one that was 25cm and a big one which was 65cm. I caught my 65cm barra on the last cast. I was getting frustrated because everyone else had caught a big one and my little one only fought like a bream. When I caught the big one it put up an amazing fight. Every time dad tried to grab the line to drag him up he would take off again. He nearly pulled my arm off. It was the best feeling to finally land a big barra. Mum caught the biggest one it was 72cm long.

AT the rodeo they were just getting ready so the horses were all warming up.  Some of them were really pretty.  After that the freestyle motor bikers came out and started doing really cool tricks.  The motor bikes did that for a while and then out came the bucking bulls.  I was cheering for the cows because I feel sorry for them having their you-know-whats tied up.  It was funny.  Especially when the cowboys got bucked off.  By the end of the night three cowboys had to go to hospital.  Sometimes the bull wouldn’t want to go back out to the yards so they would have to bring out the stock whips and the horses.  The last bull to be brought out was RockSalt.  He  has a 98% buck rate.  He ended up with a 99% buck rate because he bucked the cowboy, Snowy White straight into the fence.  After throwing the rider RockSalt refused  to move.  They brought out the motorbikes and everything but he wouldn’t move.  So then we had to leave because it was getting too late.  I also liked the bucking broncos.

AT aquascene fish feeding there was lots of fish and one see snake that climbed up the wall and went slithering across the seat.  There were diamond scaled mullet, a stingray, barramundi, archer fish, puffer fish, Garr fish, milk fish cat fish and bream.  We also saw a massive crab.

We left Darwin and went to Litchfield.  The swimming pool was smaller than a water tank. We went to see waterfalls and rock pools.  At one of the rock pools there were lots of little fish.  My favourite part of Litchfield was the Buley rock pools because there was a waterfall and lots of tiny rock pools where I could snorkel and see fish.

After 10 hrs of driving we arrived at Kununurra.  From here we drove out to El Questro where we went on a little walk to a pond.  It was a walk in a rainforest.  When we went there we had to drive through a 1/2m river crossing.  The water almost came up to my window.  I was leaning out of the window and touching water.  AT night we were driving around looking for a restaurant and we saw a dead guy.  I think he was a hobo. Now we’ve got another big drive ahead of us and I’m really looking forward to getting to Broome.

See ya soon, Ry

Taj 11 Darwin



I found a rock.



We came to Kakadu and I went straight to the pool when we got there.  We didn’t get any set up points from Mum and Dad because we just made them set up by themselves when we swam.  We saw aboriginal paintings in caves.  It was cool.  We got to see heaps and heaps of paintings.  There was paintings of the lightning man.  I found a really cool rock and I went looking for more.  I didn’t take shoes on this walk.  The next morning we went on another walk.  We walked right to the top and we could see lizards and the water from a long way.  We met Noah, Jazz and Flynn for about the 4^th time on our holiday.  Me and Noah played on DS a lot.  Noah has to Pokémon on level 100. 

We went to stay at Woody’s in Darwin.  Woody wasn’t there but Nicky and the kids were.  The kids are Brendon and Claire.  I felt sick that day.  We went to a water park.  There was three slides, there was a red one a blue one and yellow one.  I went on the red one, you needed a donut to go on it, it was very very dark but it was really good fun.  In the end I went down it about 5 times.  I went on all of them; I did the yellow one last. 

We went to the museum. We went in the cyclone Tracy room.  It took two minutes, it was really scary.  We heard wind scraping on the road and it went like “eeeeeeeeeeee”. I wish you could put sound on the blog. We went in this room where there was heaps of animals.  There were numbers and they told you what they were and all about them on the board.  My favourite was number 19 it was a rat kind of thing.  I liked number 43 it was a ghost Hawk. 

We went to the market and I had an enormous snow cone. I got all the colours to make a rainbow. For dinner I tried some tofu and I liked it. We saw Rock Salt a very strong famous bull and we fed him some hay. He wasn’t very vicious and it was funny when he poked out his big tongue. Rock Salt was going to be at the rodeo we were going to.



Mum had to hold me becuase I almost went swimming



The next day we swam in Woody’s pool and we went barra fishing in the afternoon.  Mum caught the biggest fish, Tamsyn caught the 2^nd Ry caught the 3^rd and me and dad caught the same then Ry caught the smallest because he caught two.  It fought really hard when I caught mine, it nearly pulled me in.  It was really hard, mum had to hold onto me so I didn’t get pulled in, I was pretty much in the air.  Mum was almost in the water as well.  I was winding it in so fast but it was really hard.



Beat that!

We went to the rodeo and I saw Rocksalt again.  He was the baddest bull there but I don’t know why it was called Rocksalt.  There were some clowns there but not like juggling clowns they were running around and they nearly get hit by the bulls.  They have to jump up on the fence, it looks like they are doing push ups on the fence.  One big bull kicked dirt into the crowd.  There were horses at the start and the horses were really quick.  There was barrel racing too.  The horses had to go around three barrels as fast as they could. We saw people on motorbikes my favourite was the second guy he did the best tricks.  He did tricks on his first go but none of the others did.  I liked the tricks a lot.

We went to Crocosaurus Cove it was really fun there were heaps of crocs.  I got to swim with some little salt water crocs. It was fun.  I wasn’t scared.  I put my head in one of their enclosures but they didn’t see my head. It’s pretty weird that your heads can go through but the crocs can’t escape. We fed some turtles. Me and Clare went into a cave; it wasn’t really dark it had a fish thing in it.  Nobody else went in it, we chased the fish and I stepped on a nemo fish. 

Look at the croc, he wants to eat me.

We also got to feed the turtles.  I loved it because we got to stand right in the enclosure. I fed them all but my favourite was the pignose turtle.

See you next time

From Taj the pignose turtle.

If you want to know what a pignose turtle is, it is a turtle with a pig’s nose and I’m not joking.

Kristy's Chat Cairns to Darwin

It’s funny when you travel for a while.  You realise after a while that you don’t actually belong anywhere but you have the freedom to enjoy everywhere.  As wonderful and carefree as that sounds there comes a time when you realise that home is where you belong and it really is a very nice place to be.  For Chris the start of cricket season has been his calling to return home, for me the calling at times has become a deafening roar.  We really love travelling and we do it without a hassle but we love home!  The sense of belonging was never more evident than recently when we met a family who have been on the road for 3 years.  When they left home they were a family of 6 children and two parents.  Today they are a family of 9 children and two possibly insane parents.  Clearly they have no issue with intimacy in the caravan, obviously at some point they have conceived three kids on their journey.  Eeeewww.  At this point they have no intention of settling down, getting a house or sending the kids to school.  The amazing part is that they haven’t even made it to the southern states yet.

The drive from cairns took us across the beautiful Atherton Tablelands where we embarked on a journey to visit as many waterfalls as possible in a 10 hour time span.  We settled for the night in the middle of nowhere at a free stay.  It was here that I learnt that you can hear a road train approaching for 52 seconds prior to it reaching you and when it does get to you it’s as loud as a jumbo jet on take-off.  A long day of travel + minimal sleep makes mummy a dangerous traveller.


No time for toilet stops boys we've got more waterfalls to see.



Really hot springs!





Scary dark caves



Driving deeper into nowhere we pull up at the Undurra Lava Tubes.  This is an amazing geological area and our very expensive two hour tour taught us a lot about the layout of the land following the eruption of Undurra volcano.  We were treated to cave tours which provided a cooling refuge from the 40degree heat.  Once again we had the only kids on tour so I had drilled into the kids the importance of good behaviour, high expectations etc.  All was going well until we ventured into a cave that was full of water.  The temptation proved too much for Ry and he started a water fight in the freezing cold pond.  At this point I did what any good mother would do, turned around and booted as much water into his face as possible.  Seriously, if you can’t see the benefit of starting a water fight in those temperatures it may be because you’ve fallen into a coma.



A life size (so they say) replica of the biggest croc ever caught



Kurumba alive with wildlife, but still no Barra

After a couple of nights rest at Undurra we continued the very long, very boring trek to the Gulf of Carpentaria. Karumba is a thriving little tourist town that provided me with many surprises.  Its calling is recreational fishing.  Barra, catfish, salmon and dewfish are all in abundance and the promise of hooking a huge Barra has tourist coming from everywhere.  If however you don’t like fishing there’s very little to do.  Chris and the kids fished every day but alas the Barra still swim freely when the Pentlands are around.  The highlight of Karumba was undoubtedly the AFL grand final.  The kids (led convincingly by cats supporter Taj) had educated all the none AFL followers to barrack for Geelong leaving one lone Victorian magpies supporter to cheer on his team.  Well we all know how it ended and I’m very proud to say that Taj didn’t rub it in with his celebratory dance for too long.



Dental hygeine Mt Isa style



Have I mentioned yet that we live in a massive friggin country!  We drove and drove and drove for hours through land abundant with nothing.  We crossed through several more wild fires that seem to burn furiously through the most sparsely grassed land defying logic.  Our only stops for the day were to refuel and drain the diesel filter after picking up some very dirty fuel.  I’ll add with importance here that Chris and I looked very much the professional traveller as we jumped out the car, popped the bonnet, identified the fuel line and started purging the water out.  Yes we looked like two people who knew exactly what they were doing!  Well what would you expect, with hours of boring travel I had read the entire Patrol maintenance manual during the day.  We chugged into a roadside stop late at night just out of Mt Isa.  When I say chugged, Chris had misjudged the fuel consumption and we were not going to make it to town so we pulled up begging fellow travellers for fuel.  Ahhhhh the laughs I got watching my mathematician husband sucking diesel through a hose while complaining that the dirty fuel had cost us about 100km of distance.



Another long day on the road to nowhere saw us pull up at yet another free stay on the Stuart Hwy.  My first observation of NT was that their road trains are even bigger than the ones in QLD.  It was at this road stop that I met, by far, the biggest moron of my life.  His name was Sean and his travelling companion was Noddles, a camel that he had rescued from Katherine and was now walking to Alice.  For those who may not know that’s about 1000km.  He said he doesn’t mind the walk, after all he once walked from Broome to Brisbane and it was in Noddles best interest to get out of Katherine.  Sean’s toes were all black and bruised, he had no toenails on several of his toes and he spent about an hour bandaging before he went to bed.  Noddles on the other hand had a lot to complain about and the complaints commenced at about 5am when Sean started to load her up with their gear.  For those who don’t know (and I’m sure that’s many of you) a camels call is bloody loud.  It was like giving the Star Wars character Chewbacca a megaphone and standing right next to him as he roars.  Perhaps it was hearing Noddles cries or the fact that we have travelled for days with no reward but the Pentlands experienced their first group meltdown of the trip.  All but one family member ended in tears (heartless bastard).  We agreed that after getting to Darwin we would review out travel plans and may head straight home.



Tamsyn left her mark at Daly Waters Pub. That's her school badge
 beside Chris UBCC coach badge.



After wiping away the tears we hit the road and finally we were rewarded with a genuine tourist destination.  With the morning madness still fresh in our minds the kids watched as I wandered fully dressed into Bitter Springs without so much as a glance for crocs.  The kids then bombed in behind me and we thoroughly rejuvenated mind and body in the thermal springs.  It was only as we climbed out that I truly recognised the swamp smell and took note of the warning signs about crocs.  We knew we had to settle for a few days and regain our equilibrium.  Staying at Mataranka springs was just what we needed.  We could enjoy swimming in the thermal pools all day long.  The only setback was that once a year they have an influx of about 25 000 bats who come for 28 days to breed.  The smell of bat poo was laughably disgusting. It’s a smell that I can now identify in the smallest quantities. 

Ry enjoyed his 10^th birthday at Mataranka with a big feed of chicken parma and as there is no bakery within 300km he settled for a block of vienetta icecream for his birthday cake.  His best present was the fact that we agreed to not travel anywhere on his special day.  The following day however we were off and running again. 

Katherine Gorge was utterly beautiful.  We took a two gorge tour down the river.  In between the two gorges you have to get off the boat and walk between the gorges to the second boat.  We were on a boat full of senior citz so the kids figured that if they jumped off the boat first and legged it across the rocks they would get time to swim in the rock pools before the oldies made it to the boat.  Obviously they did it easy.  Whereas Taz jumped in fully dressed Taj stripped to his undies and then continued the remainder of the tour in them.  He added “I think I’ll do all our tours in my undies it’s really comfortable”.


Captain underpants on tour!



The night was spent at Edith falls.  Another magnificent collection of swimming holes and waterfalls.  We met up with another family here and the kids had a great time playing with new friends.  The nights are almost unbearably hot and even if there was a sign saying that the pools were infested with crocs I’d still be tempted to swim.  But there’s nothing to fear the signs all state that the rangers constantly check for and remove any saltwater crocs that they find.  I  just hope that I don’t find one before they do.   



A cooling dip at Edith falls.  Pretty sure
the crocs are all gone now.

Every time we speak to travellers who have been over this way they refer to Kakadu as kaka-don’t so our Expectations were very low.  To our astonishment it was in fact amazing and the kids started to refer to it as Kaka-absolutely-du.  We had the most memorable experience.  The kids drank up all the history and lost themselves in interpretation of aboriginal art.  There were very few complaints as we climbed rock hills to see cave paintings and visualise where spirit ancestors now lie.  Staying at the Jabiru resort just added to the experience, using the air con in the van all night certainly kept us all sane.  By far the best experience was achieved by chance.  We went out to Cahill’s crossing because we had heard that the crocs come in to feed at the change of the tide.  We meandered down to the boat ramp and met an aboriginal family fishing.  Noelene had brought her husband and two of her five kids out to the crossing to fish.  The girls all fished with hand lines and bait pulling in fish after fish relentlessly.  The dad on the other hand was using a lure trying to hook Barra (no luck and I’m starting to think all this talk of hooking the big Barra is a myth).  We sat on the ramp and Noelene shared stories about her land with the kids.  She laughed and joked about her kids not going to school and just staying at home to go fishing with her (I think Ry wanted to be adopted).  It was such a carefree and relaxed atmosphere until a huge croc started making its way towards the boat ramp. The girls just picked up some mud and threw it at him and he retreated.  Astonished I asked if they were scared.  Noelene replied, “Nah love, we just throw some mud.  You know.  They know we looking at them and they want to eat us only when they think we not looking.  We throw mud and they think, nah she watching us. No good here”.  So with that my kids set themselves up on croc watching duties and peppered each and every croc that approached, and let me say there were plenty of them.  As we were leaving we herd yells from the bank.  Fearing the worst we spun around to see Noelene pulling in yet another huge fish with a croc chasing it up the bank as she pulled it in.  Her daughters were yelling and commenced the throwing of mud emergency procedure until he retreated.  Noelene laughed and yelled at us, “See.  He be a cheeky one, he not want my fish he want to eat me.”  With that she continued to unhook her fish and recast.  The next day, accompanied by our new friends from Edith falls we headed out to catch fish like Noelene.  At one point we counted 10 crocs in close proximity to us.  The kids were all sitting on an elevated platform ready to throw mud while the adults attempted to catch the elusive big Barra.  At the end of the day we had 6 children with very muddy hands, no fish, no lures left and a lifetime of unbelievable memories.

Finally, after some very hard yards we arrived in Darwin.  It’s time to get the car serviced and to stop travelling for a while.  Ah relax.