Julie Style: Bring on the Weekend

Around Darwin , Australia
Friday August 20th to Sunday August 22, 2010

Well actually this was Thursday night. Scott was lucky enough to win a chicken (or a chuck in Australian) at Lawn Bowls. In case I didn't mention before, Deb, Scott and I have been attending some Social Lawn Bowling. Who knew this game was so much fun. It's cheap and fills a night every week and we are actually all getting better. Anyway, every night one team wins a couple "chucks" and Scott won so now he had to cook it. He gets it to stand up so nicely by putting a pop or beer can full of juices and spices (you'd have to ask him what it is) inside the chicken while it cooks. It was really good.

Anyway, Friday came and went (as it usually does) and then Saturday hit. Another very busy day for us. It started out slow and not very early with some apartment hunting. It is our Saturday routine. We got some very good leads so hopefully in the not so distant future I will be out of my tent and into an apartment....or townhouse......or whatever.

During our stop for lunch. Deb had to have a picture of our pigtails. Yes, mine are a lot longer.

We look so serious don't we? Probably just hungry.

Once we had exhausted our search for apartments we headed back to the campsite, to get all dressed up so we could head out on the town. We headed to a place called Happy Yes that plays a lot of live music. They also only serve drinks that come in a bottle or can (weird I know). But no worries you can buy pre-mixed gin and tonics here.

Scott needed a little help getting dressed while we waited for the bus to arrive.

Before we headed into Happy Yes however we made a quick stop at the Lighthouse to see what the Darwin Festival was offering up. Through a hole in the fence I watched the end of the Street Battle Dance Competition (the wrong team won by the way) and then we watched the Silent Disco for a second or two. Now this was entertaining. Basically how it works is people rent a pair of head phones, pick which music they want to dance to and then dance away. It is interesting because people can pick from several different options and the place is dead silent.......but lots of people are still dancing....but not always to the same music. It was fun guessing what they were listening to.

Hanging out at Happy Yes.

A little bit of the music we heard at Happy Yes that night.

Sunday morning.....well morning-ish we headed out to Litchfield National Park to find a place to go swimming. People often use Darwin as a jumping pad to get to Kakadu National Park but Litchfield is closer, less populated and well just a lot of fun. To get there you take the highway but once you hit certain parts of the park......it's four wheel drives only. The park certainly has some features that you won't see many other places in the world.

Those aren't tombstones. They are in fact magnetic termite mounds. They all face the same direction with their thin edges facing north/south.

This is also a termite mound known as a cathedral mound. It might interest you to know that it is made of termite saliva and excrement.

Surprise Creek was our destination. If you are wondering about the snorkel.......it's for the car not us. Not very safe to swim in the river crossings. We are in croc territory.

Getting ready to cross one of those river crossings.

And here we are making that crossing. The water level is quite low because it is still the dry season. During "The Wet" this would be much much deeper. As you can hear, Scott was very excited.

Eventually we made it to Surprise Creek which consisted of a couple swimming pools and a couple water falls. Scott was quite happy because he was able to climb nice and high to check out the view.