AHHH! KARUMBA

Happy Mother's Day to all the mums, especially ours.

If your wondering why your lucky enough to get 2 blogs out of me this week we might be out of range for the next couple of weeks as we are heading into the Northern Territory (woohoo).

As much as we love being near the sea and to us it feels like home, these coastal areas is where we spend a lot of money.  Being a tourist up here is expensive.  They charge the most outrageous prices and there seems to be surcharge on everything.

So we head inland, the drives can be long and a whole heap of nothing sometimes, but it's the little surprises around the corner that make it all worth it.  Windy Hill was one of those.  Travelling through the tablelands we came across this wind farm that produces enough electricity to run 3500 houses.  The kids got a kick out of seeing the windmills up close and it was amazing how cold it was up there.  Then there are those moments when you look at each other and say "is this it?".  Innot Springs is one of those moments and with thoughts in our minds of gum trees lining the bank and hot bubbling springs to soothe our weary bodies the reality was a dirty creek and all we came away with were scalded feet and a sense of major dissapointment.

But the disappointment was short lived when we arrived at Undara, back with the kangaroos, starlit nights and the peace of country life.  Still travelling with our buddies the Malones, Jacinta and I decided to take the kids to a sunset tour of  the lava caves.  About 20 of us hop into the bus and the kids got a buzz about seeing all the different kinds of kangaroos.  They are amazing - did you know that when the mother kangaroo feeds her joey she also has an outside teat to feed other baby, glad I'm not a kangaroo!  There's only one variety of kangaroo that we eat and it's the eastern grey.  This is volcano country here and we head up the mountain for champagne and nibblies, pulled up a rock and watched the sunset.  With it's amazing array of colours it's quite a site.  Then the really exciting bit came when we all headed into the lava cave and saw the bat show.  This particular cave is huge and goes in 350mtrs but you can't go any further because of the co2 levels.  Each of the guides have to bring in a lighter to check the o2 levels.  The bats in the cave are small miro bats and there were a couple of scary snakey characters on the way out that were eating them.  But the fun didn't stop there for the kids as the guide took them on a night bushwalk with torches too see all the wildlife that comes out at night.

We all wanted to try our luck and try some gem fossicking, hoping we'd find that bit of sparkle so we could just keep going around and around this amazing country. ( By the way we have met a few grey nomads that do just that,  just keep going round and round).  Mt Surprise was a bit of a surprise as you could drive through it in under a minute.  We stopped off at the info centre and met a very cranky rude old lady who told us we had to go 40k out on a dirt track, little did she know there was a little gem fossicking place 2 buildings down??  So for 1hr we bought our 3m x 3m pit and go for it.  For $30 all the kids got a kick out finding gemstones and there were lots of digging and sifting action going down.  The Malones got the prize for most gems found! Then we walked up the Kalcani volcano rim, a 2.5k walk which was perfect for the kids.

Undara campsite is made up of old train carriages done up for accommodation, but at $250 a night it's a bit steep.  We had an arvo session in one at the pub which was cool.  That night the kids had a great time making a fire, melting marshmallows and eating damper.  How nice is the country life!!

After 7hrs in the car I was ready to leave Scarlett on the side of the road.  The kids have been surprisingly good on the car, but Scarlett has grown her 3yr old horns the past few days.  So needless to say the journey to Kurumba was long and painful.  Ahh Kurumba, this is grey nomad party time here.  Everyone has a boat so we definitely were not in the cool group here.  There's no one around till the afternoon happy hour where they get together and tell their fishing stories.  We went to Ash's for barra & chips and we watched the sun go down, by far this is the best one yet setting over the sea.  We are all on croc alert up here and getting really excited about getting closer to the N.T border.  We ran into one of the locals when we were buying prawns and she said you even have to go to Cairns to get a decent pair of undies, that's how remote it is, us city people are lucky. The petrol seems to be getting more expensive the higher we get which we expected.  We paid $1.47 at Kurumba but when we went through Normanton it was $1.87! (needless to say we did not fill up there).  We have been really pleased with the car and van, both have been travelling really well.  We haven't got cabin fever yet and haven't even watched TV in weeks, can you believe it.

TAM'S TIPS
Don't believe the hype (Innot Hot Springs)
Watch out, if you hear a kangaroo grunting he's about to attack!
After having many happy hours on the road, elastic pants are your friend