We finally leave Darwin behind and after doing a bit more shopping to finish kitting out the van and we are off to Litchfield National Park. The road is straight and the landscape flat. There are a couple of small bush fires along the roadside; one serious enough to have the emergency services in attendance. This is the country of the massive road trains; enormous lorries hauling three or four trailers and they take no prisoners – apparently stopping for nothing and no-one as they hurtle along the highway.
Batchelor, just off the Stuart Highway (the road that runs from Darwin through Alice to Adelaide), is a small township in a parkland setting. There are a few houses, a general store-cum-post office, a pub and Aboriginal art centre. We stop here for the night – tomorrow the national park.
The campsite has a bird feeding sessions in the evening and early morning. It attracts scores of exotic and colourful birds including rainbow lorikeets, which it’s possible to view from close quarters. After dark the frogs and toads come out; some quite enormous!