Darwin to Victoria River Crossing, Northern Territory
A 'finish errands' day, getting the car serviced, before heading out of Darwin at noon towards the Western Australia border.
It was an early wakeup at 6:30--we stayed up far too late watching an episode of Six Feet Under. The writing was good, but the whole episode was kind of odd. What's with all the gayness? In the four subplots, there were three main 'gay' incidents. It also appears the episode is from the middle of the second season. Could the writers please bring back crazy Billy again? He was far more interesting.
Anyway, we dropped the LandCruiser off at the Toyota dealer at 7:30, and walked into Darwin city, stopping at the one good internet cafe with a fast connection. All the other internet cafes in town suck--they're either on slow dialup connections, or restrict you to web browsing only (no chat!)... but Didjworld Internet cafe gets the prize for the lamest setup. They use Compaq iPaq WindowsCE devices and run Terminal Server on a Windows2000 Server over a dialup connection. Not only do you get slow connections, you get slow mouse movements too!
So we paid bills and looked at balances. I decided the stock market was going to go further south, and put in an order to sell all of my Oracle stock and almost all of my SPY depository receipts (that track the S&P 500). Yep, I lost money on both. Oracle shares were off about 30% from what I bought them, as were the spiders, down about 20% as well. Hello capital losses! I must remind myself that the stock market is not a bank. Investing is not the same thing as saving. For the next few months, probably until I get back from Australia, I'm keeping most of my dollars as cash, with the exception of Microsoft ESPP shares. I'll hold on to those, and hope I don't ride those down as well.
I'm thinking also about a more reasonable, risk free way to get a 6.125 percent rate of return: pay off the mortgage earlier. I think a program to pay off half our remaining mortgage (say $100,000) in three years is doable. It would be a good thing.
After the Internet surfing and bill paying, we just wandered around, going to the news agents and getting this weeks Economist, and seeing if my CALM package had arrived at the post office from Perth. It hasn't. Drat. That's the main reason we stayed in town to begin with! We'll have to get the goods when we start the trip.
And, with all that done, and the LandCruiser all lubed up, we headed south, then west. South to Katherine, where I mailed a postcard to Aunt Kathy, then west until just before sunset, where we stopped at Victoria River Crossing. The drive west from Katherine was interesting, much more than we expected--the trees took on a lusher look, and undergrowth disappeared, leaving just bunchgrasses. The effect was park like. Then as we got closer to Victoria River and Gregory National Park, the landscape changed too, from rolling plains to large hills with the occasional red cliff. It's pleasant looking country around here, the most agreeable we've seen in a very long while.
Weird Wildlife Sighting
Nothing much. Maybe yet another blue wing kookaburra.