Wooohooo! Emma, Amy and Oliver arrived a couple of days ago. I’m not sure who was more excited. It’s nice for the shoe to be on the other foot when it comes to greetings at an airport. As we are now all together July 6 we shall declare day 1.

The van park is great. Your choice of three diffent pools. I haven’t run for a few days now, mostly cause I haven’t felt the need after pulling Amy and Oliver through the water, swimming laps with Oliver on my back and making numerous trips to the teenager infested loos with one or two children perched on my shoulders, back, front or various combintions thereof.

The teenager loo gatherings are an interesting phenomenon, driven largely by the power sources required by campers to charge various electronic devices. You almost can’t get in for hours on end. Not that I can criticise given we are travelling with, let me see, two phones, an ipad, ipod, my Garmin running watch, digital radio, and dad’s car GPS. How did it become so complex?

Big thanks to dad for lending us the caravan by the way. It is just fantastic. Very comfortable and currently accomodating five of us very nicely. I’m becoming a little obsessive about keeping the floor clean, and may have to relax my standards just a little. Still I’ve only washed it once (the caravan that is not the floor which I’ve washed quite a few times) since leaving, pretty good for me. The car has had two goings over.

The highlight for us in Darwin in our short stay here so far has to be the Mindil Beach markets. We arrived early anticipating tired children. Emma and mum perused the many food stalls while Amy, Oliver and I settled ourselves in the shade of palm tree and waited for a street buskers show to begin. Oliver devoured two crocodile sushi roles. We were all enthralled when the show got under way, but clearly the kids had never seen anything like it. Oliver was so engrossed he pretty much just straight forgot to eat the icecream he was holding. Good thing it was in a cup and not on a stick.

After the show we crossed over the dune to watch the sun slip away over the water. The kids ran around the broad sand flats with looks of pure joy on their face as the tide turned and chased us back up the beach. Does life get any better?

Well it doesnt while i sit in the maccas on the Stuart Highway waiting for Instant Windscreens across the road to replace our windscreen anything but instantly. Still we’re not paying (good thing we took out that windscreen insurance) so its all to the good!

Til next time.