Darwin to Coowinda

22 July,

Today we made the move from Darwin to Cooinda in the Kakadu National Park.  Our journey took us south along the Stuart Highway to the intersection with the Arnhem Highway which we followed to the intersection with the Kakadu Highway and then to Cooinda.

It was an interesting day's travel.  Right now it is burning season in the top end and so we passed several large patches of burned and smoldering bushland.  The fires seem to have stirred up the local wildlife.  We saw a great many kangaroos and wallabies grazing at the side of the road, not to mention water buffalo and the odd dingo.

We stopped for a break at a place called the Bark Hut Roadhouse.  It is full of atmosphere and features an enclosure out the back that houses a couple of water buffalo and emus.  When we arrived we saw several people standing outside the roadhouse with their mobile phones held out in front of them.  Bev asked them what it was that they were photographing.  They weren't photographing anything.  They were trying to get a signal!

We arrived at about 12.30 pm right at the hottest part of the day.  We did the bare minimum in terms of unhitching and setting up the caravan before retreating to the bigger of the two pools that the Cooinda Lodge and Campground has to offer.  I have to say, the pool and the nearby bistro and bar are the best that we have come across so far on this trip.  Even slightly better than the similar facilities that we enjoyed at the Free Spirit in Darwin.  After enjoying a swim and long soak in the pool, we lazed around until late in the afternoon, before returning to our site to finish what we should have finished earlier in the day.

There is no terrestrial TV reception in this part of the world, so we are going to have to do old -fashioned things like reading books, listening to music and talking to each other.  To tell you the truth, neither of us slept very well last night and so we are looking forward to any early night tonight. Bev is already asleep and it is not yet 8.00 pm.

The good news is that there is a strong mobile phone signal here, for Telstra subscribers anyway.  So that means that I will be able to send out blog posts as I write them.

We are going to start visiting a few of the Kakadu attractions tomorrow and so I hope to have a few photos for tomorrow's post.  Talk to you then.