My Adventure In Oz

By Alexa Glick

Last year my family and I went on holiday to Australia.  Instead of touring the country in style, we decided to take every day as it comes and that’s exactly what we did.

        After arriving in Darwin, we spent the next couple of weeks burning up the miles travelling down to Adelaide.  Darwin is not the most exciting of places, but the Hippy Club's offer of free food went down a treat. There is also fish feeding at high tide, where metre long fish, feed bread from your hand, which is pretty strange.

         In what was to become the first of many ridiculously early pre-dawn starts, we embarked on a day trip to Litchfield National Park, where we saw a seven metre high termite mound, (Fact: There are so many termites, their combined weight would be twice that of all the people!) and swam in crystal clear watering holes below sparkling waterfalls. We passed our first 'sign' of Aussie humour on our way back; a fire warning stating: "we like our lizards frilled not grilled!" We stopped off at the Mindel Beach Sunset Market back in Darwin, which really lived up to its name with a really spectacular sunset over the sea. After which we wandered round all the local craft and international food stalls and ended up at the Road Kill Café, where we tried crocodile, wallaby, kangaroo and emus kebabs! But they pretty much tasted like either chicken or beef.

       Our next stop was Kakadu National Park and yet another stupidly early start at 5am. We were heading off for 3 days and apparently six to eight km of walking a day, which didn't actually happen.  Neither did one of the supposed highlights - Jim Jim Falls; it was rather a case of Jim Jim flopped! But we did see some huge man eating crocodiles on a boat trip down river.  That evening at an Aboriginal Corroboree (campfire with songs and dancing) we got dragged up (kicking and screaming) to get daubed in war paint, to dance around the campfire like idiots, now that was as an experience.

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       At Barrumundi Gorge the next day everyone dared each other to jump off ever-higher cliffs into the pools below and swim through holes in rocks under the water.  We then headed out to Crocodile Dundee Country to see some ancient rock art and watch the sunset over the plains. To get to the famous Twin Falls, early the next morning, we needed to swim for 500 meters through freezing crocodiles infested waters and unfortunately my father suffered mild hypothermia!

      Remember Charlie from Crocodile Dundee? - The buffalo is blocking the road and Dundee gets ...

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