East MacDonnell Ranges

We take a day to explore the rugged beauty of the East MacDonnell ranges. This is Emily Gap, Jessie Gap and some rock paintings.

We were expecting it to be stinking hot around Alice Springs as we tried to do the walks, but were pleasantly surprised with temps just in the mid to high 20's this week!! We walked around Corroboree Rock and Lucy found so many different coloured flowers in this short walk (luckily she carried a little bag to put them all in!!)

Some views of the East MacDonnell Ranges. It surprised us how green it looked as we were expecting more desert type country. This is Trephina Gorge and John Hayes Rockhole.

This is out at Arlunga Historical Reserve. Arlunga was officially Central Australia's first town, born out of a gold rush (1887). We enjoyed exploring one of the old mines, but found no gold. The old buildings were amazing to see. The one here is the old goal.

Devils Marbles

Simply stunning!! God's creation in all its glory!! We thought the 'marbles' were SPECTACULAR! We camped out here the night, so were able to see the gorgeous colours when the late afternoon sun and early morning sun hit the rocks. The sunset and sunrise were pretty special too.

So amazing!! These were taken early morning (about 6:30-7am) We woke up, hopped on our bikes and cycled around the 'marbles'.

There were so many 'marbles'. We loved walking around and seeing all the varying shapes and sizes. It was the perect time of day to do it. It would be mighty hot here in the middle of the day! These photos were taken late afternoon.

Tennant Creek NT

After Canteen Creek, we come back to Tennant Creek for a week. Chris spends the week doing jobs on Richard and Sue's (AIM) house in town. Each day we go out to Lake Mary Ann for a swim. We'd swim out to the pontoon in the background and have a great time jumping, backflipping and bombing off it!! Such a great lake for an otherwise hot, dry NT town.

Canteen Creek

We stay one night in Tennant Creek before driving out to a small Aboriginal community at Canteen Creek. It's a 3 1/2 hour drive from Tennant Creek. We are painting the house of Sue and Richard Davies who work with Australian Indigenous Ministries (AIM). It was interesting for us to stay in a community and see the great work that AIM do out here building relationships and telling them about Jesus.

Fun at Canteen Creek

The girls were invited along to a waterslide after school with the local kids. They had a great time. As we walked down to the school with the kids, they were pointing out bush tucker to us and goanna trails etc. It was amazing!! They were quite confused though when they saw our girls putting sunscreen on and asked what they were doing!! Oh to have gorgeous dark skin!!

The girls enjoyed having a go at some Aboriginal art. We also bought some beautiful pieces of artwork some of the local ladies had painted. We love them and look forward to putting them up at home!

This is some of the scenery on our drive out of Canteen Creek. There were quite a few dumped cars along the way. Chris is sitting in an old Holden.

There are a lot of fires through NT at the moment. We had to drive through this one. The fire was right on the side of the road and the smoke was so thick we couldn't see where we were going. Pretty scary going through with flames as high as the caravan!!

Yummo! Our mangoes are ripe and ready to eat. It's time to eat as many as we can and freeze the rest.

Goodbye Western Australia, we're back in the Terrotory AGAIN! From now on we're heading towards home.

Working in the heat out at HCJB. They were long, hot days out here at 40 degrees plus humidity. We loved staying out here for the week too. Unfortunately it's time to say goodbye to Kununurra again. We all love it here, it really is a second home to us with some very special friends. We'll be back some day........ farewell Kununurrra.

Here's little baby Thomas. This is Gary and Nikki's bub (the minister at Kununurra). He is so cute and just loves to smile and have a chat.

Skiing on the Ord River

The Webbs took us out for another ski. Forget the fresh water crocs that maybe swimming with us, this was just FANTASTIC fun!!!! Loved it!!!

Bridget and Claire with the Webb girls. They just LOVE it and had a ball!!!

From this...(no room)...to this.(room). Even though we've had so much fun here in Kununurra doesn't mean that Chris hasn't been working hard!! He did a fantastic job and the creche looks great! The job is finished now and we have moved out to HCJB ( a Christian broadcasting place) where Chris will do some more work for another week.

The girls, with their friend Ruth, put together a concert for us adults. They spent all day rehearsing. Lucy was the conductor and the other girls took turns singing, playing the recorder and playing the piano. It was fantastic!!

We enjoy a prawn, pizza and pasta night with Nikki and the Hadfields. Chris and Andrew caught the prawns, the kids and I made the pasta and Nikki and Cindy made the pizza's. What a deliciously, fresh homemade meal!!!

The Mock's care for sick and injured wallabies and Claire absolutely loved helping out. This is her favourite baby wallaby, Ruby.

We spend a lovely, relaxing afternoon/evening out at the Mocks. These girls just get on so well and have so much fun together.

MANGOES

It's mango picking time!!!! We borrow a mango picker and fill a box full of delicious KP mangoes. We saw these in Coles for $5 each, so figured we've just picked a few hundred dollars worth of mangoes for free!! They will take a few weeks to ripen and we plan to cut them up and freeze them. At the end of our picking, we were rewarded with a swim and beautiful sunset!!

Back to Kununurra

We visit one of our favourite places from last year- Kununurra!! We spent 10 weeks here last year and made some lovely friends

at St James Anglican church. We are excited to be back!! We were just coming for a quick visit, but they had work that Chris could do at the church. There were no arguements from us!!! Keep finding us jobs.....we love it here! Chris is building a cryroom/creche up the back of the church.