5 Days in the Territory with Candi

Hello everyone. I've been feeling a little left out of the blogging loop and wanted to add a few snaps of the last week or so when Candi came to visit us for a week on tour. Unfortunately Steffen wasn't able to come and we're sad that he missed out.

I won't rehash all the spots we visited as Andy did a comprehensive job on that already.

*Swimming at Sandy Creek falls a quick 1.7km scramble from our campsite. The water was frigid requiring the plunge (or fall in) method. Candi and I swam over to the falls before we heebie-jeebied ourselves out of it with talk of crocodiles. I found this walk somewhat challenging as I slipped in my best hiking thongs and took bark off my left ankle, hand and scored a stunning bruise on the back of my leg (it now comes in shades of purple, green and yellow).




*Good Morning and breakfast organisation in our homely little camp at Sandy Creek. This included phase 2 of damper baking as we were low on bread, which in turn involved the lighting of a fire. Luckily Candi is a fire bug.







*Candi dealing the breakfast spoils out to Andy. Yummy boiled eggs and fresh damper!














*Crossing Sandy Creek to get to the other side....because the sand looked nicer to sit on! We sat on it for about 10 seconds then made our way back across. It was quite hard to keep balance and ultimately I fell in. My new clumsiness was the source of much mirth in our camp.

*Crossing another creek. This walk also yielded the highest concentration of snakes thus far encountered on the trip. I very nearly stepped right on one.
*Contemplating swimming at Surprise Creek - again far too much talk of crocodiles gave us the heebie-jeebies and we contented ourselves to sitting in the waterfall instead. Poor us.
*Tropical sunset at Mindil Beach

The rest of the snaps are a collection taken from the crocodile tour we did which was....enlightening. We felt it justified our concerns about swimming in the various creeks and waterholes we'd chickened out of.

On Candi's last day with us, Friday, and with monumental hangovers we left Andy in his office ( a bit of a nightmare for the Payniac due to Telstra being down in Darwin) and set off to the explore the city. We ticked off most of the touristy spots quite quickly and walked the entire city in just hours. One of our first stops was to an historic building that turned out to be the old overland telegraph station and we were able to send a free telegram anywhere in Australia. Ours went to Mum and Dad. We visited various WWII memorials and Darwin bombing info before stopping at what was probably the highlight - Darwin Wave Pool. Oh boy did we want to have a go! Alas I wasn't wearing my swimmers and couldn't justify walking back to town to buy some so we went to the pub instead.

It was awsome to see Candi and get to spend some time with her. I think I nearly talked her ears off. We had a brilliant week with much laughter and jocularity. By the end of the week we were exhausted and the noisiest caravan park in the world afforded us little and fitful rest.

We've spent the weekend recovering at a place called Corroboree Park on the highway between Darwin and Kakadu which has great reception so Payniac can finish his work before heading into Kakadu and on through Arnhem Land to the Cobourg Peninsula for the week.