Destination Unknown

I'm now in Darwin having left Cairns after a 6 night stay. Unfortunately I didn't manage to go walking in Cairns- my knee took longer to get better than I initially thought it would. I probably would have been fine but didn't want to risk it. So I spent a couple of days resting then went on a cruise/snorkel/swim on the great barrier reef, and it is indeed pretty damn great. In fact I would probably have called it the Awesome barrier reef, but hey, it wasn't up to me. As soon as you get in the water there are approximately a bazillion fish around you as well as a few small sharks and sea snakes and loads of other colourful stuff. Was a really good day, I could have done a free 5 minute scuba dive but it took about 45 minutes of faffing around just to do it so i just carried on swimming around. Then I had a couple more days of relaxing in Cairns to allow my knee to get back to 100% before going to Darwin.

Darwin hasn't started too promisingly. On arrival at the airport I was told that the cheapest accomodation available was $140!. So I slept last night on a bench at the bus station. Now I need to figure out what to do, whether I go to Kakadu or I kakadon't. I've got 4 nights left after tonight and tomorrow night is the Mindil beach night market. Now I wouldn't usually care for a market but i've been told by several people that it is worth a look. Plus quite a few people I have spoken to have said that Kakadu is over-rated, but also some local guys said that Litchfield national park was really nice. So i'm not rightly sure what to do.

So in the end I decided that there was enough to do in Darwin for a few days. However, I walked around yesterday and saw most of the things I wanted to including a phenominal sunset which filled the whole sky. I took some photos but thet really don't do it justice. So anyway I decided that infact there wasn't enough to keep me busy for 4 days. So I decided (this is a lot of deciding, maybe i need to look up 'decided' on thesaurus.com) to take a gamble hitch this morning- as in I hitch with no particular destination in mind. For the first 3 and a half hours in which i'd made it a measly 30km it was looking like a worse decision than the war on Iraq. But then eventually a guy called Grant gave me a lift not just to Litchfield national park, but also around it a fair amount as well. So I'm now camped at Wangi falls camping ground after a couple of hours swimming/climbing waterfalls/jumping off of rocks at wangi falls.

Litchfield- Day 2
Wow, that was probably the hardest walk of my life. I left the Wangi falls camping ground and thought i'd do the short walk around the top of the waterfalls. At the top I found that there was infact a path that went to Florence Falls and it was only 20km whereas by road it's more like 40km. Although the sign said that the path was closed due to 'flood damage' I decided to go for it anyway. Silly silly Matt. Stupid infact. The 'Path' in the places where there was no flood damage was damn hard to follow. Due to the low useage of the track there is no clear path to follow. The only guidance you have (well of coarse you should have a map, but since I didn't even know the track existed I didn't have one) are marker polls, placed sporadicly, which point you vaguely in the right direction, but sometimes nowhere near it. This means at some points you have to search around, retrace your steps and generally get very annoyed. The flood damage part was even more fun, with bridges washed away and marker polls lying on the ground. It took me an hour and forty minutes towalk what can only have been 1.5km at the most. On top of the non-existant path it was 30 degrees and blazing sunshine all day. I've had 6.5 litres of water today and I still don't need a pee. Along the path there are no markers to tell you distances travelled/remaining so as time went by i was getting more and more worried. It took me 9 hours to walk 20 km and it was such hard work that when I saw the sign for the turnoff to florence falls I actually cried with relief. All that said it was a very beautiful walk but definately not one to be done on your own. Thinking about it and writing this now you can scrap the probably at the beginning- that was definately the single hardest walk I have ever done. I've already planned tomorrow- I'm doing nothing! for once i'm not going to let my adventurous side win, I'll just walk up to the waterfall and swim/relax all day.

Litchfield- Day 3
OK, so i'm not very good at doing nothing. I got up this morning and walked the short walk to the waterfall. I sucessfully did not much for a couple of hours- just a bit of a swim and climbing rocks to jump from. Just as I was getting bored of that some local guys turned up who knew exactly where to climb/jump from, and they seriously upped the ante by climbing to the top of the highest waterfall and jumping in. I decided to go for it myself but when I reached the top I was slightly regretting it. However, when you climb up a waterfall and have people at the bottom getting cameras out to take photos of you jumping you can't just climb back down. I slightly missed the correct landing spot but have only got a cut toe for my troubles. So around midday I decided to try to hitch back to Darwin so that i've got time tomorrow to upload photos and type this up. I've just got back after a seamless 3 car hitch with no more that a 10 minute wait between each lift- thats what hitching is all about.

And that brings me to now, in the internet cafe. The photos are being rather slow but there will at least be some more online. Tomorrow I fly to Bali so it's goodbye to Australia (sob), I'll be sorry to go and will be back again at some point in my life. And at the same time as not wanting to leave I am also looking forward to travelling in a different country. So it's goodbye from me and it's goodbye to Australia. Loads of love to everyone.
xx Matt xx