As some of you know, we’re spending the last few months of the school year in Australia (aka Oz). We are living in Darwin, in the Northern Territory, or as the Aussies say, the Top End. We are close to the equator so it tropical and hot here every day. Usually 33 degrees. Darwin is on the ocean. The beaches are very nice but not utilized because of all the salties (saltwater crocodiles). I love it here and home school is going great.

We live in a coconut. Well, not an actual coconut (That we be super cool if we did though) but a white structure that is called the “Cozy Coconut” (See below). We have a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom and 2 rooms. To access my room, I have to climb up a tall ladder.

The best place is the backyard. Its where we do most of our cooking (on the BBQ) and see a lot of animals. Every day, I have to leaf blow our backyard, and I notice that there is quite a bit of animal “droppings”. We have identified them, and they belong to the possums. The possums are nocturnal, and they must be the cutest thing I have ever seen. We have some pretty good photos. We call them Nifflers, which is a harry potter animal, based of echidnas, but look a bit like a platypus. They steal anything that is shiny, and since they are both cute, we call the possums, Nifflers. They are my favourite backyard buddies, along with the scrub fowl (kind of like a turkey) and the ibises (locally known as bin chickens) and a green tree frog I named, McRibbit.

On the weekends we explore the Northern Territory. Our first trip was to Kakadu National Park. We saw fantastic animals and interesting art sites. When we were driving, we spotted lots of wallabies on the side of the road, along with giant termite mounds.

The thing I liked the most about Kakadu, was the yellow water billabong. A billabong is like a marshy wetland, that is home to crocs and lots of birds. We took a boat ride on the Yellow water billabong to see close up crocodiles in their natural habitat and Azure kingfishers swoop into the water, and very majestically picking up fish. The cruise can’t be described in a sentence. Imagine a bird haven, where thousands of ducks, egrets, black necked storks, night herons, redwing parrots, sacred kingfishers, azure kingfishers, kites, cormorants, cockatoos, poem breasted jacanas and magpie geese all gather together in a billabong, and we are on this boat taking it all in. We saw 8 crocodiles and I spotted 1 fourth of them (2). We got some pretty good photos of birds too. (see below).

In Kakadu we got to visit some ancient aboriginal caves and see some cool rock art. I can see why they would live in these rock caves because they were shaded from the sun and provided shelter from the rain during the monsoon season. Below is Nabulwinjbulwinj (below left). He’s a spirt who eats women after hitting them with a yam. On the left is Namarndjolg (the fat one) who became the great saltwater crocodile. Namarrong, the lightning man is the smaller drawing on the left).

The caves also have a great lookout and view, which was probably good for hunting. The rock art showed a lot of kangaroo and wallaby hunts.

On our most recent trip we rented a 4×4 because on our last trip we noticed that a lot of roads up here are 4×4 only. You can see why from the photos. A lot of areas are flooded and trucks have snorkels on them so that they can travel through water.

Our trip started in Litchfield national park. We camped at Wangi falls, Gunlom, Umbrawara gorge, then at Florence falls. We had made a system, after exploring, we’d find a camp spot, set up, go for a swim (the most important part!), then repeat. We would also stop and swim at some other places during the day, because it was SO hot!

Gunlom was a little lake, that got poured into by a waterfall. Or so we thought. There ended up being a hike up the mountain so we hiked it. The hike was quite steep, and half of the time, you were climbing boulders, but the top all made up for that. It was an infinity pool, that came flowing beyond our sight, but close to us were a couple deep swim holes, so we decided to just hop in. It was very refreshing, and a great view.

Robin falls was the best place to swim, or so I think. It was a secluded 3-tiered waterfall at the end of an enclosed trail, with a lot of boulders. When we had reached our destination, we climbed up to the top pool. It was exactly what we needed to cool off.

So far we are surviving the heat thanks to air conditioning and lots of swimming. Next week we’re taking a trip into the dessert, which will be cooler temperatures compared to here.

Stay tuned for my next blog, all about close encounters with Australian wildlife including deadly snakes, monster spiders and you can watch me enter the cage of death with killer crocs!

Thē Íńtërńātíøñâł Moose!