For the last week I have hardly set foot outside the door here at Peppimenarti of which I should be abjectly ashamed, but I am not! It's my first down-time in almost a year so a bit of self indulgence is warranted.

Not that I have been idle by no means. I spent the first few days just investigating accommodation and airfares for our next trip in 3 weeks. We are off to Bangkok for 5 weeks then stopping off in Kuala Lumpur for 5 days and finishing off with a few days in Bali. From there we are flying back to Darwin then the long drive back to Tennant Creek.

For the last 2 weeks Jo's mum and dad will be joining us so there was airfares and accommodation to book for them as well. I actually enjoy the planning of routes and researching different types of accommodation for trips so the task wasn't too tiresome.

We have decided to base ourselves in Bangkok in an Airbnb almost right on the banks of the Chao Phraya River but probably do at least one or two short trips from there. We always enjoy Chiang Mai so that will be on the list and this time will be doing some research into long-term accommodation there. There is a germ of a plan to move to Chiang Mai for a year or so maybe next year but still continue to do some short contracts back in Australia from time to time.

As we will be in Thailand for more than 30 days unless we can arrange a 60 day visa at the airport will have to do a "visa run" out of the country to stay the rest of the time. Anyway we are both counting the days until we leave, which reminds me I must print off a countdown to holidays calendar for the fridge door.

I have been accessing a website for inspiration from other travel bloggers for sometime now. The site is feedspot.com and I have found it a wonderful resource for a variety of special interest websites. My focus, of course, is travel and particularly the more mature aged traveller which feedspot caters for extremely well. 

There is an opportunity for bloggers to submit there own sites for possible inclusion in the "top (so many) travel bloggers etc list. With some trepidation I submitted our details a while back thinking, I hope I don't embarrass myself here! A week ago I received and email from the site's founder Anuj informing me we had made the list!!!

I was so pleased and somehow felt although my efforts in maintaining a web page are mainly for my own pleasure, that being included was validation that...yeah I could contribute something to other like minded travellers. Any way check out feedspot.com no matter what your interest I'm sure you'll find something of interest too.

Use this link to view the page.

As it is said, plans were made to be changed/amended..whatever and so it was with ours. I finished work in Tennant Creek but decided at the last minute to forego my trip to Perth in order to take a more leisurely pace on the drive back to Peppimenarti. Not that there is much to see along the way that I haven't seen many times before so I set off at lunchtime Friday and was in Katherine by dinner time. Overnighted in The Beagle which is our accomodation of choice in Katherine and after quick load up of, hopefully, 4 weeks of groceries set off again.

At the turn-off to Edith Falls I wheeled off the highway to relive an event from nearly 35 years ago. I was working at Katherine Gorge, as it was known then, as a tour guide and had a lot of contact with the local indigenous people. One in particular, name withheld for privacy reasons, asked one day if I would like to see some rock paintings that no tourists had ever seen. I was very keen so took him up on the offer and we set off towards Edith Falls with my guide directing the way. 

Shortly after turning off the highway he got me to stop the vehicle and we walked only a few hundred metres off the road to some rocky outcrops. Here was found a variety of rock art, some pretty ordinary but some quite reasonable 
One outcrop had a huge boulder leaning at an angle on another rock making quite a sheltered area underneath and my guide said that the "old people" used to live here.

Long story short, 35 years later I was able to locate the outcrops with the art still as it was all those years ago. Since my original visit there has been a high voltage power line run quite near the site. I wondered if any of the workers had investigated these rocks and were they even aware of the ancient artwork's presence next to where they were working. As I walked back to my car the contrail of a high level passenger jet was passing overhead and I couldn't help but wonder what other changes these painting will see over the coming years.