Historical Ramblings

Darwin and the Northern Territory

Hi, everyone.

Time flies when you're having fun. We spent about two weeks in Sydney, working on projects and house hunting. We'd found a perfect little place in a neighborhood we really liked which would have opened up toward the end of August. So, we decided we'd do a couple of weeks of travel before and, while talking to the friends we were staying with, discovered that this was the only realy time we could see the Northern Territories (Darwin, Alice Springs, and Uluru/Ayers Rock), so we headed up here for a while. Mind you, we've since decided that we don't want to rush back to Sydney, so we've given up on the house and are just slowly working our way back down to the Melbourne/Sydney area. We'll see what comes of it, but at the moment, we're having a great time.

Today we're in Darwin, Australia, a town of about 80,000 people that's the capitol of the Northern Territory. It's a cute, little town, and we've managed to find the only cafe with Wireless Internet (Wi-fi) in Darwin, called Roma Bar, where we've settled in for the last week or so to work on our various projects.

Darwin is known best for it's national parks, and we spent three days at Kakadu National Park over the past weekend. We got to see ancient Aboriginal cave paintings, beautiful waterfalls, and fantastic wildlife (including saltwater crocodiles that are 10 feet long). And I even camped, something I haven't done in at least 7 years. We went with an organized tour from Wilderness 4WD Tours (for you Google searchers) and had a great time. Nine of us squeezed into the back of an aging Toyota Land Cruiser and went flying through 4wd-only paths filled with sand (and even did a couple of small river crossings). We had a great group and a great guide and, all in all, it was a really fun time.

Tomorrow we rent a car and head down to Alice Springs via Katherine, Daly Waters, and Tennant Creek, so we'll update you more then.

More pictures are up here:

Darwin and Kakadu, including some great pictures of Zoe and me.
Blue Mountains, Australia
Sydney, Australia
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia