Digeridoo demo and Billabong birds

We started in the Mary River area where we visited a few diminutive termite mounds and spied our first wallaby amongst the magnetic termite mounds - they all line up N to S! clever wee creatures!.

We the received an interesting Cul Cul or welcome and introduction to Aboriginal culture from Graham a Limilngan-Wulna local. We all had a go and have realised that it is a real skill to be able to get sounds that do not sound rude from a digeridoo! He also showed us how they make paints and explained how local justice is metered out using a heavy club, where wrong doing is the responsibility of the whole family not just the person who commits the crime.

From there we went for a fabulous sunset wildlife watching boat trip on the Coroboree Billabong, truly beautiful.
We saw both large 4m+ long Salties and fresh water crocs as well as the beautiful and huge Jaberu ( a green necked crane type bird about 1.5m tall)

 See his eye - looks prehistoric!

We were told NOT to put our hands over the sides as crocodiles can jump a long way out of the water!

Here are a few other beautiful shots from this magical evening. Thanks to Rhian's great camera work.

Rhian and Callum - a years worth of hugs!

How wonderful to see the two of them again, for Shona it has been virtually a year so she was sooo excited when they arrived at 4am in Darwin airport. After they had a sleep and a swim in the pool we had a lovely evening at the wharf in Darwin watching the sun go down

What does that tell you about each of us!!!!

Next morning bright and early it was off to Kakadu National Park at the start of our 12 day Adventure Tours Australia trek from Darwin to Adelaide.

There were 14 of us on the trip (6 nationalities), although some people only did parts of the full trek with us. We were on a variety of overland vehicles and buses and had 3 guides, Tom for Kakadu, Audia Darwin to Alice Springs and Dave Ularu to Adelaide.

This is Tom our excellent story teller.

We were camping most of the time but it was permanent tents (certainly not 'glamping' though!) this is one for 4 of us! The best mattresses were definitely in the 'swags' - more later!

Darwin and Kakadu were hot and humid, being about 28C, so we seemed to be taken to places where swimming was the done thing - we were told that the rangers regularly checked for salt water crocodiles - ('salties' are the dangerous ones apparently)

VERY refreshing on a hot day! - and no crocs!

What a wonderful winter

I can't believe it is 2 months since we got back from Fiji our last update. Sooo much has happened the most magical being seeing Rhian and Callum again after nearly a year.

But we get ahead of ourselves! Lets start with the next trip which was to Australia a mere 2 weeks after our return from Bula Bula Island. Malcolm was delivering training for School Business managers in Canberra, so we decided to have a few days in iconic Sydney before flying to Darwin to start the trek with the family.

We enjoyed some bright but freezing weather down to below zero in Canberra! We both thought it would be warm!

The national parliament buildings, art galleries and museums in Canberra were superb, especially the aboriginal art works which represent long story lines, creation stories and representations of daily life such as where to gather different types of foods. The folk lore is divided up into 'men's work' and 'women's work' and neither know the stories of the other.

Sydney was a tiny bit warmer and the opera house and bridge were as iconic as ever.

Malcolm was especially interested in the maritime museum and ships including Captain Cook's ship Endeavour at Darling Harbour as well as having a fun walk and photo on Bondi beach!

We even found a favourite coffee shop in Kings Cross, Café Hernandez which had not closed for 42 years - 24/7 for 42 years!! - amazing and lovely people and coffee too!

And here is the Bondi beach photo!!