Today we pick up our ‘Wicked’ camper, which turns out to be anything but. We had seen these vans all over New Zealand and all in much better condition than the one that greeted us today. The upside, of course, as with the car we hired in NZ, is that any further chips, scratches and dents are hard to attribute to us. Nonetheless a smarter, cleaner van would have been nice. But then you get what you pay for, and this is the cheapest. After picking it up the rest of the day is spent shopping for food and items to kit it out – sheets, pillows, cooking utensils and so on. Now we are more or less ready to roll and will set off for Lichfield National Park tomorrow. Although the van is making a rather disconcerting screeching noise from time to time and if it continues is going to require attention.
It rained this afternoon – still hot, but now sticky and humid.
We are stopping overnight at a caravan park on the Stuart Highway in the outskirts of Darwin. It’s so nice to be able to use a decent and clean kitchen again!