Bees Creek was the first of a few stays that we had booked in the Top End.

Because the Northern Territory was COVID free, and it was the dry season, and international travel was not yet permitted – it was pretty difficult to find any accommodation – apparently people were even being turned away from caravan parks because they were so full.

So we had managed to string together a few bookings to cover our time in the NT, but it had been very difficult to get anything affordable in Darwin itself – so we ended up in Bees Creek – a rural suburb about 30km south of Darwin served by a small shopping centre at the nearest ‘big’ town of Humpty Doo (population around 8000).

We stayed in a converted shed that had originally been built on the owner’s property for their son to live in – a practice that is apparently quite common in rural NT. It had an outside seating area with a barbecue, and on our first night we were welcomed to NT by a large snake…