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Camping Oz 2017 - Northern Territory

13th June 2017
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Following on from our travels through the East Kimberly region we passed over the border from Western Australia into the Northern Territory. Our first port of call was the second largest city in the NT; Kathrine.

While in there we visited the local national park. Sadly many of the parks in the NT have a no drone policy so I was unable to take any aerial shots of these beautiful regions (unless I wanted to pay hundreds of dollars for a helicopter flight that is).

some bats hanging from trees

We did other things while in Kathrine, I got a very short haircut from our campsite neighbor:

me getting a hair cut

We went to a bush-food and stories evening with an awesome dude called Marksie who told us tales about how over many many years he gained the trust of the local aboriginal women enough that they would share with him their bush food gathering and cooking knowledge which he now shared with us.

bush tukka

It was a fantastic evening but after a few days of Kathrine we were ready to move on, first tho a nice refreshing shower:

taps

Our first stop after Kathrine was a couple of nights in the beautiful Litchfield National Park where we did a bunch of hiking and swimming in the awesome croc free watering holes.

big waterfalls in litchfield

from under the water In the evenings we gathered some firewood and cooked up some food around the campfire much to my great pleasure:

me bbquing

We were impressed by the facilities in Litchfield and in Northern Territory parks in general actually. Even though the NT has only roughly 250,000 people living there, they really have invested a lot in their parks particularly when compared to WA.

After a couple of excellent nights at Litchfield we packed up and hit the road again heading north to the capital of the NT, Darwin.

AU0060 - Darwin Skyline We checked into the Discovery park for 6 hot and humid nights. Over that time we spent some time catching up on some projects and generally enjoying being in a major city again, the first since leaving Perth really.

I spent some time taking some pictures with my drone.

AU0061 - Darwin Fish

AU0062 - Darwin Shore

We also spent some time hitting a few museums including the aviation history museum.

big plane is big!

I didn’t know much about the Australian history during WWII, I was obviously very familiar with the UK and Europe but I wasn’t aware that Australia played a part too fighting the Japanese and sending troops to Africa and Europe.

While in Darwin we learnt to be on our guard a their were thieves about.

raccoon theif

After the very hot and humid time in Darwin I was ready to head south again towards cooler climates. First tho we detoured into Kakadu to spend a few days in one of the most popular National Parks in Australia.

Plains pano

Kakadu is a destination Kelsie has been looking forward to for a while. She was particularly keen to see the ancient Aboriginal rock art:

aboriginal rock art

rock art

Its crazy to think about the history of these people particularly when some of these paintings are over 10,000 years old.

We stayed at a few different campsites in Kakadu including Jaibaru, Coolinda and Gundon.

camp

my feet and lizzy

Soon it was time to move on however. Our first stop after Kakadu heading south was the hot springs of Mataranka.

I wasn’t expecting too much from here but it turned out to be awesome with kangaroos and pheasants wandering around the campsite.

The springs themselves were warm, beautifully clear and I really didn’t want to leave but leave we sadly did. It wasn’t all bad tho because next up was something I had been looking forward to for ages, Dally Waters and its historic pub:

dally waters pub

In the evening we enjoyed a few cold beers and some awesome live country music.

And then that was it for the Northern Territory, next up Queensland! This post was copied from my site AboveUnder.com a site dedicated to my travel drone photography.

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