Here are a few photos from Darwin and Litchfield national park just south of Darwin. We also drove through Kakadu national park but it was pretty quiet there this time of year. Kevin saw a frilled lizard there.

Darwin is a city far from civilization. It's so remote. The highways that lead to the west, east and south of Darwin are mostly deserted of towns. About every 100 or 200 kms you stop at a roadhouse, the only sign of people, and get your gas, food, maybe camp for the night. The only other people you see are driving and the roads are not busy. Sometimes you pass by a gate of a station that is far off into the bush. The heat in Darwin was so humid you soak through your clothes in no time. We only stayed one night but met some great people. We met a family from Tasmania working in Darwin for awhile. Their daughter Sam became great friends with the girls. You can see their lovely photo above. Hello to you Sam and to your mom and dad if they're reading this! Their motorhome was called 'The Castle' after the Australian movie that's a great one to watch if you can find it. The lady by us had her place covered in Christmas lights and people were walking by to enjoy them. The couple next to her had a large green tree frog in their backyard and the kids had a great time harassing him, giving him a shower, and screaming when he made a leap for it only to land on one of them. We toured around Darwin, checking out the downtown area and doing some Christmas shopping in a wonderfully air-conditioned mall. Cousin Jim used to live in Darwin. We didn't stay long as we had already decided to be at Jim's in Canberra (several 1000 kms south) for Christmas and had lots to see still on the way down.

As we left Darwin we stopped at an aboriginal gift shop. The woman had emus and water buffalo fenced in. She said she kept the emus as guard dogs. In the shop she had some local creatures as pets: a carpet python, a file snake, a blue-tongued lizard, a small freshwater croc and a snapping turtle. She took out the python, the lizard and then the file snake and let us touch them. The file snake feels rough (thus the name) and lives in the water with the croc and the turtle. It was quite a treat for us.

That night we stayed near Litchfield. The next day we went for a swim at two falls in Litchfield national park. The first had about 10 pools going down the falls. We tried out several of them, enjoying the cool water. Kyra jumped from a small cliff into one, they were very deep. A few kms away were the Florence falls. It was a large waterfall pouring into a huge clear pool. You can see it in the picture above. We had a wonderful swim, Kevin and the girls swimming right under the falls. The water was clear to the bottom and the fish swim around your legs.

In the last picture you can see how big the termite mounds can get! Right after the picture Kyra got stung by something, we're not sure what. After this we continued south, backtracking about 600kms to Tennant Creek where we headed for Uluru, (previously Ayer's rock).