Renting the campervan was great fun. First of all we headed south to Litchfield National Park which was full of beautiful waterfalls, magnetic termite mounds and great scenery. We camped near Wangi Falls and it was lovely to swim in the plunge pool early in the morning, before any of the tour groups got there. We then headed further south to Katherine and the Nitmiluk National Park. Again we stayed inside the National Park which was very peaceful and agile wallabies came right up to us in the evening to say hello. We went canoeing in Katherine gorge which was very picturesque, but carrying the canoe over rocks and through rapids to get between the different gorges was hard work. We also went walking to the top of the gorge and visited Edith Falls at the Northern end of the park. We then drove nearly all the way back to Darwin stopping at Berry Springs to visit the Territory Wildlife Park. The wildlife park was brilliant - we saw birds of prey up close, watched turtles and barramundi swimming in large aquariums, saw lots of different types of kangaroos and lots of birds in different environments. Here are some photos.

We're now relaxing in the sunshine of Cairns and trying to buy a second-hand car to drive down the East Coast with. There's a lot of paperwork to get through, but we're getting there. We're also planning a diving and snorkelling trip to the Great Barrier Reef for Chris's 30th Birthday on Thursday. Should be a blast!

Kakadu National Park was fab. The best bit was unquestionably boating on the crocodile-infested Mary River... erm, which wasn't actually in Kakadu. As well as the crocs, we saw lots of birds including an osprey.

We camped in tents under the stars, walked lots (mainly up to the tops of waterfalls -- a fetish of our tour guide?), and saw lots of wildlife and Aboriginal rock art some of which may have been 4000 years old, but the experts haven't really been able to date it accurately. The walk to the top of Jim Jim falls was strenuous, and we're divided on whether it was worth the effort. The view was outstanding, but the waterfall has dried up in the last few weeks, and the descent was very slippery.

Supposedly lots of the places we went to appeared in Crocodile Dundee, but we haven't seen the movie recently enough to remember!

We pick up a campervan tomorrow and plan to go walkabout for a few days before flying to Cairns. ttfn.

Hello again. We're now in Darwin soaking up the sunshine having spent a week based in Alice Springs seeing the red centre. We walked around Alice and out to the Telegraph station where the town began when they decided to run a telegraph wire from Darwin to Adelaide to connect London and South Australia. We also hired bikes and cycled out to the Alice Springs Desert Park where we saw lots of colourful birds, and reptiles and furry animals in the nocturnal house. The highlight though was a three day camping trip out to see Uluru and Kata Tjuta National Park and Kings Canyon. Uluru (Ayers Rock) was stunning at sunset and sunrise and we enjoyed walking round the base. We were suprised and awed by Kings Canyon which looked like a minature version of the Bungle Bungles in places and we had to lie down on our tummies to look inside the canyon. The camping was fun and our guide cooked a delicious dinner on the camp fire.

We arrived in Darwin yesterday and headed down to Mindil beach for a sunset market and have spent today exploring the town and booking a four day tour to Kakadu National Park for Sunday. The weather is lovely and hot here which is a nice change from the freezing nights we had in Alice Springs.

Here are the latest photos. Enjoy!

At long last, here are some photos from our Redback tour from Perth to Exmouth and back. We'll see what we can do to recover some more photos, including kangaroos we narrowly avoided hitting in the hire car and our bus running out of fuel near Exmouth.

With a little help and the purchase of winhex, we have managed to recover about 80% of our photos from the corrupted memory card, and we can probably manage a few more with more time. Phew. It's taken many many hours today though, so you'll have to wait a little longer for us to edit the pictures into a suitable format for the web.

We're flying to Alice Springs tomorrow. More soon...

I felt almost physically sick this morning when the digital camera reported our compact flash card as corrupted, with two weeks of photos on it. We're desperately trying to find ways to recover the images -- suggestions readily accepted. In the absence of any computers I can install software on, I may end up posting the card home.

In the meantime, here are some photos taken with a disposable underwater camera while I was diving. Picture quality isn't great, but never mind.