After leaving Lake Argyle we said a sad good bye to WA, it’s been our home for the past 6 months! But a very happy hello to the great NT!!

Katherine was our first stop.  There’s a few nice national parks around the area to sight see.  Quite a number of hikes too but we skipped those for the heat was a bit much.  Happy enough to find the waterholes & cool off!  There was also a sneaky hot spring right in the middle of town, which was surprisingly lovely in the cooler mornings.

We left old Barn dog in a kennel here while we travelled further north toward Darwin.  Both Litchfield & Kakadu national parks are on the way up, & as there’s only one main road in & out of Darwin we thought it best he stay here.  We’ll collect him on the way back in a week.  The longest stay he has had away from us yet, & no it was not easy being away from my fur child that long.  I missed his sloppy kisses & sooky “Pat me!” whines dearly!  Even had to be that annoying mother who calls day care (the kennel) every second day to see how my boy’s doing… lol.

Douglas Springs were hot hot hot!!  Too hot in some sections to even swim.  Very pretty though.

 

Roughly 2-3 hours from Katherine, Litchfield National Park is a must see.  With a range of waterfalls, gorges, short hikes through rainforest & rock pools, we definitely had our days filled in!  Fairly touristy, we didn’t get the pleasure of swimming at the holes on our own, but still they are so beautiful & we were way too hot.  Sharing with a few other stoked humans didn’t matter.

It’s a fully bitumen road through the park, which was great for us taking it easy with The Clam (our caravan).  Or so we thought….  After only half a day of driving around exploring the park Fred had noticed the cracks in the chassis, which we had repaired (TWICE) in Broome, had reappeared. 😦

Our thoughts exactly = SHIT.  What’s worse was that along with the two ever-reappearing cracks on the left side of the chassis, now there was also a huge-donkey NEW crack almost all the way through the chassis on the right side.

Our thoughts exactly = F*#%.  Game over.  That night was certainly one of the harder nights sleep we have had.  So many thoughts, ideas & scenarios running through our heads.  After seeing the remainder of Litchfield (minus The Clam, she stayed parked on the side of the road), we had to figure out what to do next.  Do we call the insurance company now & wait all day for a tow truck…  Do we risk it & drive into Darwin ourselves…  We chose the later of the two & took it ourselves to a few places to see what their opinions were.  It was a tense drive into town – both of us praying to the higher powers for the van to stay in one piece.  Lucky for us it did.  After arriving in Darwin, we then rang the insurance company & oh goodie, we were back on the insurance waiting game journey.

While we were waiting for the professionals to come up with a quote to fix the van & get all the assessments done we decided to fill in our time seeing what Darwin has to offer.

I twisted Fred’s arm & got us booked on fishing tour.  Fred wasn’t so keen, figuring we could just take our own boat & have a dig ourselves.  But I figured why not try one day with a local pro who knows the area & can guarantee you’ll catch barra or you get your money back!  We spent nearly a full day out on the water off Dundee Beach on the elusive barramundi hunt.  Unfortunately there was no Mick in sight, but barra were a plenty!!  We were reeling them in almost non-stop!!  Goes without saying Fred nudged me not too long after catching his first decent barra, big grin on his face, “yeah, this was definitely worth it! Good idea babe”.  Lol, win for me!

We also saw a few resident crocs roaming around, such cool animals!

The Mindil Beach markets are a must do.  Live music, good food, trinkets & a magnificent sunset will have us any day!

A day going back in time at the war museum was very humbling, & interesting.  Must respect to the old diggers!

We also managed to catch our old Tassie friend JC & his girl Shida for a good old catch up in between sipping on a coupla cold ones!  Thanking you Shida for the ridiculously tastey spread you put on!!

And the botanical gardens proved itself a nice place to waste time if that’s what you need to do around Darwin!

The natural aquatic playground Berry Springs was another breathtaking place.  With a few different pools & a little river linking them all together, it was a great place to literally drown our sorrows regarding The Clam.

 

I could go on & on about how much of a shitty situation it has been with our caravan.  It is what it is.  And yes it sucks.  We put so many hours last year into The Clam, getting her ready for this trip.  So many personal touches.  It has so much character – yes she’s old & she’s been around the block once or twice before, but still it’s hard to let go & accept her ultimate fate – that she won’t be leaving Darwin.  And we will. 😦  BUT as sad as it is, it is just a challenge that we are more than capable of overcoming.

 With the insurance company somehow coming to their current conclusion that they would cover the cost to fix one half of the damage, & not the other, we’re left in a bit of a pickle.  Like, WTF use is it getting half of the caravan fixed..?  It didn’t help that the repairers only quoted for a half-arsed fix either.  It basically needs a whole new underside & that doesn’t come cheap, so their alternate idea is to try & patch up the damage, again.  Seeing as the last 2 patch up repairs have failed within a fortnight we don’t really like this idea very much.  We DO NOT want to find ourselves in this situation yet again on this trip.

So, if we were going to get it fixed we would want it to be a legit job & we would need all the help possible from the insurance company.  (A full on legitimate repair would cost as much as we paid for the van!).  As well as time, we would need more time.  It is something we are running sweet out of with the wet season creeping slowly upon us (It actually rained yesterday!).  We don’t really want to be here for another 2-3 weeks waiting for the repair.

The stupidest thing of all was that for the whole week we were waiting for their assessment to come through everyone within the insurance company we spoke to virtually told us it would be written off.  That the damage was too extensive to warrant fixing.  Basically, un-roadworthy & not worth repair.  So we had braced ourselves for this, & were expecting to be paid out for it.  Mmm yeah, dream on.  Not the case thus far.  We are learning insurance companies don’t like to pay you, & if they can find a reason not to, by crickey they will!

So, where are we at?  Well, we aren’t really sure.  We came to the tough decision to leave The Clam behind, parked in our friend JC’s paddock.  We didn’t want to be sitting, waiting & getting down any longer.  Sooo for now, we have hired a trailer, piled everything from the caravan into it, & are sleeping in our double swag.  On the road again: camping, exploring & continuing to have a good time.  With a few tears along the way we are making it work so we still get to travel & see this great country.  Just with a little less wriggle room.

Fred’s parents have gone far & beyond regular parental duty & so kindly offered to meet us near Mount Isa with their camper trailer (they live in northern Queensland).  And so this could be a very real possibility for us, swap them our hire trailer for their lovely, shiny, made for the off-road pop up camper!  Mega shout out to you Wendy & Glenn, we are beyond grateful for the offer!!

For now though, we wait to hear the insurance companies latest pitch & in the mean time are continuing slowly along the road.  Taking each day as it comes.

Kakadu National Park, we’ll be seeing you.

Thanks for reading, hope you have enjoyed.

Xo