We are on holiday!

Sunday 24th July 2022

I woke early to an amazing dawn chorus, and whilst I probably should have jumped out of the tent and grabbed the binoculars for a walk, I didn’t 🙃. I had spent a bit of time the night before checking over the plan for the next few days – Andrew has prepared a detailed schedule for the 2 weeks that they are here, and made all the appropriate bookings. Whilst I did read over it at the time, I was feeling a fair bit of overwhelm about planning the rest of our trip, and didn’t look into it in detail. Hence late on a Saturday night I realised a crucial detail – that our Walker Creek campground at Litchfield NP involved a 1.5km walk in. Whilst in different circumstances I wouldn’t even have blinked at doing that, we are getting around in an Oz tent, which is fantastic but folds down to something not much smaller than the structure itself, and ideally requires 2 people to carry it. Not something I want to hike into a camp with (though almost worth it to see the look on other hikers faces 😁), not forgetting mattresses, sleeping bags, food, cooking equipment and children. And it’s really hot! The campsite sounds absolutely amazing, and it absolutely pained me to cancel the first of our plans, but we decided to stay another night at the caravan park. If I had actually looked into it more closely at the time we could have packed a couple of hiking tents and been a bit more prepared, but it was not so!

So, we paid for another night at the campground, then headed to the nearby Territory Wildlife Park, which I am pretty sure Richie and I have been to before, but neither of us remember much about it at all! We got there in time for the bird show, which was interesting and the kids really loved it! Afterwards we got a closer look at a rufous owl, which Bonnie particularly loved!

We had a picnic lunch, then headed to the sandbar for the fish talk, where I learnt that there are freshwater rays! After that we looked at the aquarium, which is fantastic and has a great collection of native fresh and saltwater fish, and a couple of crocodiles. That took us to 2:30, by which time we were all feeling pretty hot and exhausted, so we called it a day on the park and headed back to Berry Springs – I don’t think we could get into the water fast enough!! I snorkeled around with Bonnie, checking out the fish again – lost my sunglasses that I stupidly had with me, but miraculously found them again! It’s amazing seeing the kids gain confidence and skills in the water so quickly, I think they would happily stay in the water all day!

We headed back to camp around 5, and Richie and Andrew went to a nearby river to try for a barramundi. Tegan and I hung out with the kids and had dinner. The boys arrived back empty handed but with enough stories of the ones that got away – just in time as the kids had all just turned feral 😆

I took Bonnie and Otis around with headtorches to show the eye shine of insects on the ground. They were absolutely thrilled to discover many, many spiders everywhere (wolf maybe?). I mentally reminded myself to make sure the tent is always zipped up! Everyone then collapsed into bed, feeling pretty exhausted after some big swimming days!