Hot, damn hot

We arrived in Darwin after spending another 24 hrs on the Ghan. This included an enforced 4 hour stopover where they make you get off the train (at 8am into 38 oC heat) at Katherine Station. The only problem being that the station isn't airconditioned and is 6km from the town centre, now, the only way you can get to the town centtre is to pay $9 for a ticket on a bus that the Ghan lays on to take you to town - swines. After a bit of breakfast we ended up holing up in the public library where we sat for a couple of hours reading the papers.

We arrived in Darwin, eventually, to stifling heat and extremely humid condtions. Rachael has already had a good whine about the weather up here and not entirely without reason. Due to everyone being constantly hot and sweaty it is a place of short tempers and arguments, obviously myself and Rachael didn't succumb to these tendencies... much!

We decided to hire a car in ordewr to drive out to Litchfield National Park and Kakadu National Park. Litchfield is basically a smaller version of Kakadu that you can swim at, Kakadu itself is infested with fresh and saltwater crocs so you can't really swim there.

After hiring the car a few other people at the hostel expressed an interest so we ended up starting out to Litchfield in a little Hyundai Getz with five people crammed in, myself, Rachael, a French guy and two Swedes (the race not the vegetable).

Litchfield was brilliant, we went swimming in a couple of plunge pools, saw some massive 20ft termite mounds and drove for hours through fantastic rainforests.