Alyssa's Perspective Of The First Month

Hey everyone, 

So, Dad wants me to write a column for his blog about the first month of this trip around WA/NT. Let me get one thing straight here, I am only writing this because I want my point of view to be told, you know? To clear up all the stuff Dads been writing about me online. 

I'm going to try and make this a bit more interesting than the usual blog entry, give everyone a bit of a laugh.

Anyway here it goes......

29th June: I am awoken by my family making a racket, packing things up, yelling about how somethings missing, how 'I put this here!' and now its gone. I decide not to get up until someone  actually come into my room. I hope that maybe they'll let me lie in a little longer, but soon enough I'm up and awake! Just kidding, I wasn't properly awake until 12:30pm. 

As we travel down the highway, Trent talking the whole way, Mum and Dad talking about petrol prices and state borders, I'm listening to a playlist that  includes multiple INXS songs and of course (since we're on a highway) 'Highway to Hell'. 

We stop off at Renmark for the night, the realisation that I'm not going to see all my friends and family for a long time was finally sinking in. 

4th July: The next notable place was 'Daly Waters' here we had a lovely meal and got to have nice proper showers (with hot water and everything!). The Daly Waters Pub had a lot of character and was really nice. 

Skipping forward to.... 8th July: We started Kakadu today, by staying at a place called 'Gunlom Falls'. The campground was nothing special, extremely dusty and dry, not to mention that fact that we had set up camp right next to an ants nest. 

We end up climbing up to some plunge pools at the top of the falls, the view was really nice and it was very hot so the swim once we got up there was great. 

Onward to.... 10th July: The main highlight of this date was that we stayed at a lovely caravan park called Cooinda, where we went swimming in the pool and got to have our first proper shower in a long long time (in reality it was only 6 days, but it felt like forever). 

Next up... 12th July: Here we went to Twin Falls accompanied by Swiss traveler Chris. We learnt a lot about his life in Switzerland and how he worked with turtles in Australia. He was a really nice guy. 

17th July: Today we went to the Mindil Beach Night Market, where I got a temporary tattoo and a pentagram necklace. 

18th July: Trent and Dad went on a fishing charter and I ended up doing a lot of homework. Around 8:15 I went to the camp kitchen to do some school stuff and a guy called Eli started talking to me, he was in year 10 (but only three months older than myself) and was traveling for around two years. 

20th July: I hung out with Eli (He tried to teach me to play ping pong and I failed) today and Trent began to talk to Eli's little sister. We went to Berry Springs for a swim and when we got back to camp we met with Eli and his little sister again and basically talked with them until 9:30. During that time we were chased by this little kid (who was holding a spear and cane toads) that was so tired he looked like he was going to pass out. 

I really enjoyed hanging out with someone my own age and it was really awesome making friends.

Yeah, so those are basically the highlight (for me) of our trip this far. After that we left Darwin and went swimming in a few waterfalls/plunge pools. Now we are staying back at Katherine Gorge.

Until next time,

Alyssa Fritzlaff xx