Day 20: Litchfield NP – Darwin

Not really that much to report today. I’m pretty sure that I was all caught up last night when I posted, so no news from last night. You know as much as I know.

Probably more, if I’m honest.

Another stunning sunset – they all start to become a bit mundane after a while 🙂 – and a reasonable night sleep.

I think I mentioned the other day that I felt like I was coming down with something. Not too serious – I mean it’s not going to kill me – but just feeling like I’ve got a bit of a head cold, with a touch of the flu aches thrown in.

Sore back seems to have resolved itself, but MBW is complaining of a sore back now. Does that mean that she has been on her own back about something?

Hmmmm.

Today is probably the shortest drive that we will do for the whole trip, or at least close to it. Litchfield Banyan Tree Caravan Park to Robbie Robbins Reserve Darwin is only a mere 96km. I mean, we didn’t even crack the ton.

We pulled out of Banyan Tree CP (BTW, Google Maps calls it Litchfield Banyan Tree Resort, but I think that is taking a fairly extreme translation of the word “resort”) somewhere before 10.00am and headed towards Darwin.

We did need to make a short detour via Batchelor to make a … er, deposit at the local dump point. We are big believers in leaving some of our DNA in some of the places that we visit.

And when I say that we made a “detour via Batchelor”, it was hardly a detour when you consider that Batchelor is barely more that a one-street, unavoidable township on the road between where we were, and where we were going, but …

… actually, I’m sorry I mentioned it.

We stopped in Batchelor to empty the toilet canister.

Batchelor is a pretty little Territory township, no doubt only made richer by our generous donation.

Onwards to Darwin.

And what an unremarkable, and uneventful trip it was. The closer you get to a capital city, the more turkeys come out of their lairs and the more irrational driving you see. While I concede that we barely exceeded 100km/h on a road with a 130km/h limit, those galahs must have been doing far more that 130km/h to have disappeared so quickly into the distance as they did.

No doubt you’ve heard of the Darwin Awards? People who contribute to the gene pool by killing themselves in spectacularly stupid and dangerous ways? I’m sure that the awards were named after some of the people from Darwin who think it’s OK to overtake a caravan on a blind corner at close to the speed of sound.

Anyhow, it was an uneventful trip.

We arrived at the Robbie Robbins Reserve – it’s actually an equestrian reserve, I’ve learned – before lunch. We set up, had a quick, early bite of lunch, and went out to paint the town red.

A few interesting things that we have noticed in Darwin.

Firstly, we are no longer in a post-apocalyptic world with no internet. Our phones have come to life, emails have come in, missed calls have been reported, and the FaceBook is working again. Does it get any better than this?

Secondly, we discovered that Darwin has these things that hang from poles at intersections, and they have 3 coloured lights in them – a red one, an amber one, and a green one. The expectation is that you stop on the red, go on the green, and hope for the best at 90km/h with a caravan on the back when the light changes from green to amber and you haven’t got a hope of stopping before the middle of the intersection.

I can’t remember seeing a set of traffic lights since … since … um … Roma? Mt Isa maybe.

Anyway, on setting up Percy at Robbie Robbins, we discovered that the drain in our kitchen sink has completely broken, meaning that the stainless steel bit at the top is no longer connected effectively to the plastic bit at the bottom.

Which is a tiny bit of a problem, because water no longer goes down the drain, but cascades into the cupboard under the sink.

But Darwin has a Bunnings! Hooray for us. First stop Bunnings … who didn’t have what we needed, so we went to Reece Plumbing … who also didn’t have what we wanted, so we were directed to a place called BTC (Boats, Trailers, Caravans), and is my next-favourite place in the whole world, close behind Officeworks and Bunnings.

They have everything that you could possibly want … except for the bit I needed. But the dude there was very helpful anyway, and sent me back to Bunnings to buy one bit, so he (Mr BTC) could sell me another bit, that solved my problem.

And all I wanted at that point was to have my problem solved. And $37 to solve that problem felt like a bargain.

A quick stop at Chemist Warehouse to buy some industrial-strength drugs to relieve my worsening cold symptoms, and MBW had a browse through the local Target to see if they sell anything different to our Target.

They don’t, BTW, but MBW did find a pair of shorts.

Hallelujah!

Another quick stop at Anaconda for the same reason, and with the same outcome. MBW does like those three little words … ”fifty percent off”.

Another stop at Woolies to stock up on food, and we were back at Percy to unload.

Sink fixed (hooray!). We were at risk of having to eat out for the rest of the road trip due to our inability to wash dishes, but that crisis has now been averted.

Back into Elsie for a quick trip around Darwin to get our bearings and we found ourselves at a pretty little park called Cullen Beach to gaze out to sea and wonder what the poor people are doing today?

The highlight of the day – other than seeing traffic lights and getting mobile coverage – was having a nice video chat to 2 of our favourite little people (Elias and Isabel), which was really good because we also spoke to the other 2 favourite little people (Teddy and Lili) briefly the other day.

So our tanks are full again 🙂