So realised I'd missed out on saying that on the Monday of last week we did a stock up trip to Katherine.  This was the day after the Darwin lockdown had started and the town was utterly crazy. People everywhere, vans everywhere and as for Woollies - utter bedlam.  However we got most of what we wanted and headed back to Douglas Daly - it was about a 4 hour round trip.  

Moving on to Thursday 1 July till now - well its been a laid back lazy week with a fair bit of socialising, a lot of reading and just generally chilling out so not really that much to talk about.    However we did manage a few outings.  Over four days there was a camp draft on at Douglas Daly about 10km from us so on Saturday we took a drive up there and spent a pleasant few hours watching and learning the intricacies of this fantastic sport.  I could have happily stayed there all day.  It was an amazing display of total cooperation and teamwork between horse and rider.

Another day we took a drive out to Ooloo Crossing - no longer a crossing but stilll a very pretty spot.  On the Sunday we set out armed with a map one of the girls in the bar had given us to find another local beauty spot called Crystal Creek.  Lets just say that the map was somewhat confusing and we explored all the tracks in that area pretty thoroughly but eventually found them - very beautiful.  

I'd had a bit of a rethink about our plans regarding Craigs Jab and getting the phones especially after I tried to call Officeworks re posting the phones to Katherine and they didn't sound particularly helpful about that then they couldn't find our order - which I'd already had an email saying was ready to collect and the money already taken from our account. We'd decided to lash out and get phones with decent cameras.  Our Oppos are great little phones but the camera is pretty basic and next to useless at night.  After a bit of research we've gone for the Samsung A52 which gets a pretty good writeup and is a pretty good price.  By this time the situation in Darwin was looking much better so we made the decision to head up to Darwin on the Monday to pick up the phones, get some supplies and see if we could get Craig's jab done up there.  We were successful on all fronts and that's him now had his second vaccination and once again absolutely zero after effects.

Meanwhile I'd been talking to John and Carol - the couple we met back in Karumba who we've caught up with a few times and who we plan to buddy up with for a fair bit of our WA leg.  She'd been doing a bit of research and discovered that we could do the necessary 14 days self isolation at Wyndham Caravan Park.  Currently NT is classified as low risk for entry to WA but that still means you have to isolate for 14 days.  So I got us booked into Wyndham for the 18 July and then got online and was able to secure our G2G passes.  We're not rushing across and will stick to our original idea to spend most of next week in Katherine and get the car serviced as well as visit a few other spots we haven't yet been to.  Our hope is that as NT continues to have no new cases, that it will be reclassified to very low risk which means we just have to have a back up plan for isolating but don't actually have to do it.  So cross your fingers for us.

While we've been here we've got to know some people from South Australia - Pete travelling solo in his motor home and Michael and Sea who are in their coaster.  We meet most nights at 5 in the bar of the park and have a couple of drinks before heading back to our vans for tea.  Yesterday was Pete's birthday - 64 - and so we had our usual catch up.  But the park has three delightful Spanish girls working here - Alba, Paula and Laura.  We've all got to know them pretty well especially being here for almost 2 weeks.  It turned out that Laura's dad back in Barcelona was born on the exact same day as Pete so we were calling him her Aussie dad.  Just before tea the three girls brought out a carrot cake with sparklers on it and we all sung Happy Birthday to him.  He'd had no idea and was thrilled to bits.  He then insisted that since it was Roast night at the bar that he wanted to buy us all tea and continue to celebrate his birthday with him.  So we very gratefully accepted and all had a delicious Roast Pork and Roast Beef dinner with beautiful veggies.  

I got all my 'housework' done yesterday and a load of washing done so having a very lazy day today.  I must say we've got very good at doing nothing.  I've had a go at setting up our new phones but because the signal here is mostly 3G it isn't enough to transfer all the apps across.  So I used it for a day and had a great play with the camera - we can see a huge difference in the quality of the photos and it will be great to have them fully up and running. But meantime I've gone back to my old phone till we get to Katherine and get wifi - that way I can still get WhatsApp and some of the other apps I use frequently.  

We've two more nights here then we're off back to Katherine.  See you there.  Just an add on re Craig's shoulder.  Thats now six weeks since he fractured it so that should be healed now and he's been able to progress to the next set of exercises he got from the Physio and can work at getting some strength back.  It's definitely so much better though still a long way from right but we knew it was never going to be a quick fix.  Pete has lent him a little portable TENS machine which he's using a couple of times a day and is finding it's making quite a difference.