Slow travel, increase change

We've been on the road for 2 months now, travelling in our van with our two girls, camper trailer in tow. Our 100 days around Australia is more than halfway done and we've seen and done a lot.

Lately it's been hot weather, gorges and swimming holes as we've journeyed through the North West parts of our country - Broome, the Kimberley, Katherine Gorge, Darwin and Kakadu.

Some pretty photos for you below:

The girls at Town Beach, Broome

View of the Eastern Kimberley region, El Questro Station

Scarlet Gums glowing in the setting sun, Nitmiluk National Park

Rosie twirling batons at Mindil Beach Sunset Market, Darwin.

And as we've travelled I've been thinking (as those of you who know me will attest - I think A LOT!) about how the act of travelling is like an ongoing experience of rebirth. 

Stay with me here...

Each place we stay awakens new parts of ourselves - some positive, some less so - but either way it shifts us.

Each time we move we allow ourselves into something slightly different. So in a way we are reborn each we enter a new place - it's a new world for us to explore.

I believe this is one of the greater benefits of slow travel - we can increase the rate of change we allow in our lives.

We automatically stretch our comfort zones when we travel, we make more decisions, we move ourselves - literally with kilometres beneath our feet, but soulfully too as we expand our vision of our place in the world.

Xx

The isle of kangaroos

Our first view of Remarkable Rocks

Our journey around the Great Southern Land has brought us to Kangaroo Island, off the South Australian coast, this week. 

We are camped in Flinders Chase National Park, at the Western, more rugged end of the Island. 

First explored by Frenchman Nicolas Baudin, who at once introduced pigs (now feral) and chickens, Kangaroo Island was the site of the first 'free settlement' in Southern Australia. Today there are many old stone houses dating back to that era.

This is an island of extremes in some ways - an expanding tourism effort has the main attractions set up for international visitors in tour buses while the wild, relatively untouched coastal cliffs are not far away. I'm struck, as I always am, by the irony of this necessity.

As campers we are relatively free to do as we please, go where we like an enjoy the 'free' parts of this island. And we're having a good time.

Today we visited Remarkable Rocks - granite boulders atop a lower granite outcrop jutting in the southern ocean. Rosie played hide-and-seek with her grandparents among these metamorphosed beauties. 

We've spent several hours in the national park visitors centre looking at local animal skins, learning about Australian megafauna and discovering the genetic differences of the animal species on Kangaroo Island when compared to the mainland (generally species here are smaller, if you're interested).

And oh, the discussions Rosie and I have had - about paleontology, animal extinctions, introduced species, aboriginal culture, geology and ecology. It's a veritable gold mine of educational opportunities.

More of this to come to be sure. Xx

Ian trying his luck at Remarkable Rocks

At Admiration Arch - cold and windy.

Lunch at Cape de Couedic lighthouse

One cool Mama

One cool Rosie xx