Big Fat Hairy Spider

Tuesday Oct 1/Wed Oct 2

The day started exciting. We were just waking up when I opened one eye and noticed the speaker on my side of the van. “Strange,” my sleepy brain thought, “I never noticed before that all the wires are hanging out of the speaker...” Then I opened a second eye and said “Holly s...!” I jumped out of bed. Thank goodness Kees was brave enough to attack the gigantic spider, which was draped over the speaker, with a steak knife. It unnerved us for the rest of the day. I kept glancing uneasily at the speaker but all seems clear now. I just wondered if his extended family had hitched a ride, too.
Then we drove. As usual. But this time we had the added excitement of driving from Kakadu to the town of... drum roll please... Humpty Doo! Can you image living in Humpty Doo? We wanted a postcard to commemorate the occasion and were told that the post office was right behind the gigantic statue of a crocodile. We couldn’t miss it.
We did. But drove back in hopes of finding it from a different angle. Which we did. Bought the postcard and continued on to Darwin. The capital city of Northern Territories truly is the Top End. Can’t go any further from here. At 38 degrees we did not galavant all over town. We strolled along the water front, then were thrilled to find the state library which was air conditioned and had FREE wifi. There’s a first for everything.

We are now camped at the backdoor of Litchfield National Park.  We decided to drive straight to the end of the dead end road through the national park, camp there and make our way back in the morning. A plan that worked well. I wondered why I felt totally lethargic until I looked at the temperatures... We have seen -50 in the Yukon but I had never seen the thermometer completely red to the top, + 50º C. The pool was the size of a rain barrel but it was enough to cool me down.
The drive back through Litchfield National Park was lovely. Pockets of rain forest (dense eucalyptus with palms), rock walls and suddenly - amazingly - there was water cascading down into pools. We soaked at one spot with many pools and little falls. Nice and cool before tackling another 250 KM back to Katherine.