We arrived in Darwin to find a packed Fannie Bay full of cruisers, many of whom where heading into Indonesia. Many boats we had encountered on our trip up the East Coast of Australia were there, and many many more.
We had planned to head into Tipperary Waters marina for a week to clean the boat and do some jobs, but you need to get divers to squirt things into your seasocks first to check you're not bringing in a nasty breed of mussels. Whilst the lady diver was down there we asked her to take a couple of pictures of our keel as we had had a bit of a clonk on the way up. Turned out it was a bit more than a scrape. Luckily, the tides were just about with us and we were able to squeak into the narrow channel to Spot Onn Marine to get her looked at. So our first week was spent on the hard. Luckily it was an easy fix, and just took time to dry out. We took the opportunity to get off the boat (the kids coped surprisingly well living on the hard, but the ladder was a long drop down) and get our selves to Kakadu.
A great 2 day trip, but far too much driving - the distances are vast and much of the landscape is very dry. However, the Yellow Waters were stunning, as was the sunset from Ubirr.
Back in Darwin, we got the boat back in the water and had a great stay in the very friendly Tipperary Waters marina. We used this as a base to see a bit of Darwin itself in between the usual cleaning, provisioning and list making for me and boat jobs for Jason.
All too soon, we were ready to get going to Indonesia.