traveling0z

Today is a BIG day for the girls - they start the new school term at Kununurra District school (after a year of home schooling we are all a little nervous) the school is in walking distance, so the 3 of us walk together (Caroline will be super fit by the time we leave here) because of the heat school starts at 8am and is done by 2pm.  They are both very excited and are up at 5am!!!  they meet with their new teachers (Laura has a male teacher)  Laura is gutted as they have put her in Grade 3 - in QLD she would be in Grade 4 and we have been teaching from Grade 4 text books, however its only till November and will be a good opportunity to refresh the mind and make some friends, we will continue home schooling when we leave for Broome.  Caroline starts work in the office next week and will continue to clean on the weekends.  Will keep you all posted

This weekend Caroline started work in Kimberlyland Caravan Park (where we are currently staying) cleaning the 3 amenities blocks - starts at 7am and finishes at 1pm there are 3 huge blocks to clean!!! - by Sunday evening she is exhausted!!!!  (will get fit really quick here!!!) Matt spends the weekend with the girls making chocolate fudge cake and caramel biscuits (so all the good exercise Caroline is doing..............mmmmm).  Matt has enjoyed his first week working at Kimberly Exhaust (he has never done so much suspension work in his life!!!  so many people take on the notorious Gibb River Road unprepared!).

Sunday 12th July,

We finally find a nice CP that can put us up long term "Kimberlyland" CP its by a lovely big lake with views to the "Sleeping Buddah" we have a nice site and Matt starts work on Monday, Caroline continues with Home schooling, we will stay here (if all works out) till Oct/November then continue on to Broome.  Whilst here we will do trips to El Questro, Ord river cruise and a few others.

This is our back yard for the next three and a half months!!! the lake is about 20 metres from our caravan site!!!

The "Sleeping Buddha"

Saturday 11th July

We finally arrive in Kununurra W.A. we set up camp in Matt's new boss' shed for a night (can't get into any CP's the place is full of tourists!!!) Kununurra is a lovely town (smaller than Katherine). 

Friday 10th July

We once again we leave Big 4 Low Level CP at Katherine we head off towards Kununurra W.A.  We stop for a scrummy lunch of HUGE burgers and the freshest hot chips we have had in a long time at the Victoria River Road house!!

The road on the way to Kununurra:

The Victoria River:

The kimberly region is known as BOAB country:

After lunch we make our way to Timber Creek and decide that we have had enough for the day so we set up camp at the "only" caravan park in Timber Creek (its also the servo, shops and pub!!) they do have a very small school and a police station.

The CP is lovely with lots of shady trees and croc feeding at 5pm (all this for $25 - some of the cheapest and best parks are in the middle of nowhere!!)

Our lovely, shady site at the Timber Creek CP:

The girls get "up close and personal" with these freshwater Croc's at feeding time - Check out those teeth!!!

Thursday 9th July

Today we visited the Hot Springs at Katherine - just beautiful!!!! the water is an approx temp of 25 deg and crystal clear!!  The weather here in Katherine is just perfect during the day!! nights are a bit cooler though.  Tomorrow we are off to Kununurra W.A. to work for a while.  Will keep you all posted.

Wednesday 8th July,

Today we went for a bush walk at Katherine Gorge (the pic's speak for themselves) a beautiful place full of wonderful birds, lots of wallabies ect.  The weather was perfect about 32 deg and a lovely breeze!!!  The girls did really well with the 1.8 klm treck, it was quite rocky and steep in some places.

Monday 6th July

Sadly we leave Kakadu after visiting a few more sites and the aboriginal cultural centre (the best one we have seen so far!!).  We head for Edith Falls to camp there the night, however the grounds a totally full!!! :mad:.  So whilst we are there we try and book somewhere in Katherine - No joy everywhere is totally booked out!!:( (what to do, what to do).  We make our way to Katherine to find the showgrounds (room there apparently) can't find showgrounds (did I mention its now 4pm!!!!!)  Anyhoooo    Matt rings the Big 4 low level (our favourite park so far!!) and they offer us a non powered site for $41 for one night, then they will move us to a powered site for $44 on Tuesday - well beggars can't be choosers!!! so we agreed.  All is not lost on Tuesday we FINALLY meet up with Greg, Bev and Dan - we met them at Dubbo in January and have kept in contact (we had being trying all through Kakadu, but with limited phone range we kept missing each others SMS's).

We are staying in Katherine till Friday (we have to because the earliest we could book a CP in Kununurra was Tuesday!!), then making our way to Kununurra W.A., whilst here we will check out Katherine Gorge and the Hot Springs!!!

Sunday 5th July,

Went back to Cahill's crossing (Border of Arnhem land) spent 2.5 hours trying to catch that elusive Barra!!!  - spotted 3 croc's and plenty of Barra jumping out of the water (one lady in a boat hooked a HUGE one, she was flat out picking it up for a photo!!!)  No Barra for us today!!! We t head off to Jabiru then Ubirr to check out the rock climb where you can see the wetlands, we also see a lot of aborignial rock art!!!.   We drive out to other camp sites and decide Mardugal was the best so we set up here for the night (amoungst noisy, backpackers, had the same issue's last night as well).  Kakadu is a wonderful place.

Woohoo!!!  CROC's Rule!!  it was awesome to see them in their own environment!

The Yellow Ochre in this painting means this animal has a lot of tasty fat in it!!

These are two sisters who turned themselves into crocodiles so they could eat people.

Billabong at Mardugal

Saturday 4th July,

We arrive at Kakadu around lunch time, set up camp at MERL campgrounds ($10 per adult) there are loo's and showers.  We went on a walk to Cahill's crossing awesome place shared by Croc's, Barramundi and fishermen!!!  Will come back tomorrow with the rods!!

Sunset at our camp (MERL)

Kakadu Sunrise!!! (Merl)