Feeling clean and refreshed and ready to tackle my next section! I left Standley Chasm just after 8am - a relatively late start for me. I was dreading my pack - the heaviest load I would ever have carried - 7 days worth of food plus water for nearly 2 days.

Originally I had planned to hike from Pravda Spur, down to Standley Chasm to collect my food drop box, and then continue straight on up another mountain to spend the night at Brinkley Bluff.

However, this would have been a huge challenge. On the advice from LTTS I’d need to be leaving Standley Chasm by 1pm at the latest, to ensure I had enough time to walk and photograph the ascent up to Brinkley Bluff. It would have meant my day would have exceeded a total of 20km, through one of the hardest sections to hike (a LOT of up and down!), but also one of the most photogenic places along the trail.

Day 2 - from the designated campsite of Wallaby Gap to my proposed (non-designated) campsite near Arenge View was a distance of approx 24km.

It’s so hard to know where to start talking about such an amazing experience!

Hopefully you’ve seen the Introduction and Itinerary posts which give a bit of a general overview of my experience.

On day 1 I hiked Alice Springs Telegraph Station to Wallaby Gap which totaled 13.7km.

Day 1 was a strange day for me, in that it did not reflect my experience of the trail very well at all!

Before I launch in to a day by day “story” of my Larapinta Trail experience, here’s an overview of my trip as completed:

Day 1: Alice Springs to Wallaby Gap = 13.7km

Day 2: Wallaby Gap to Arenge View = 24km

Day 3: Arenge View to Pravda Spur = 18.6km

I'm always looking for places to go in the Top End region, new places to explore and photograph. I was recently looking for some information on Maguk (or Barramundi Gorge) in Kakadu National Park and although could find the basics from the Parks Australia website - http://www.parksaustralia.gov.au/kakadu/ - I found it difficult to find "real life" experiences on exploring and the location. When I say "real life" experiences, I mean blogs from travelers of where to go, when is best to go, different routes and walks, experiences on what people saw, what was great, where to look for certain things, etc etc. There's actually not much in depth, local information in a "kakadu blog" google search. What does show up are mainly short excerpts from people just doing the highlights of Kakadu as part of an extended trip.

Anyway. So what I want to start doing is sharing my experience and knowledge of these places in Kakadu….

A few weeks ago I bought the new Tamron 150-600mm f5-6.3 Di VC USD lens to use on my Canon 5D Mark III. I mainly shoot landscape and nature photography, and this lens was an upgrade from my Canon 300mm F4 L lens mainly for use on birds and other wildlife. The zoom range may also come in useful for me for more distant storm and lightning photography.

I was nervous to try out the new Tamron lens…

It's been a while since I posted a work-through of a particular photo. My processing techniquye and style has probably evolved quite a bit since then, so I thought it time to do another one.

This example is slightly different in that I'm going to use two versions of the same image, to blend together for a correct and balanced exposure. The image below is probably not the best example of when and why to blend two images together - the image below is more so just to show the technique….

We ended our 6 day walk with the final 5km down from Sweetwater Pools to Edith Falls. Edith Falls was a welcome site at the end of the walk - it's probably one of my favourite swimming/relaxing spots in the Top End…

Day 4 was the big day on the Jatbula trail - 17km. The walk was broken up in to two chunks, 12km and 5km with a stop at Edith River crossing after the first 12km. We got through the first 12km a supersonic speed and arrived at Edith River crossing when we thought we still had 3km to go. A lovely shady spot for lunch with a chance for a cool off! The first 12km on this day was an easy walk - flat and good terrain. The remaining 5km proved to be a little trickier…

Day 2 was a longer day than the first, travelling across the top of the escarpment. This day ended at Crystal Falls as the campground, although we actually didn't see any "falls" until the walk the following morning….

I’ve just returned from a hike in the Katherine region known as the Jatbula trail - a combined photo-trip/remote camping getaway! This walk is the first multi-day bush walk I’ve done in years and the first one my partner had ever done. The first thing I have to say about the Jatbula is that it was AWESOME! We loved it! The walk was really interesting and travelled through a variety of Top End habitats. Maybe we appreciated the varying landscape a little more than an interstate or overseas visitor, as we could really notice the smaller differences in the vegetation and the types of habitat as we were a little more familiar with the area.

We travelled through open woodlands on top of the escarpment, where we saw some amazing open views across hills, cliffs and buttes. There were monsoon pockets, bushfire-burnt regions, 2-metre high grasses, mushy marshy floodplains, amazing rock formations and colours, creek crossings and some of the best waterfalls I’ve seen in the Top End. We saw so many birds too (but thankfully only one snake and no face-to-face encounters with buffalo)!

For anyone considering walking the trail…

I’ve been using a Canon 5D Mark III since their release in 2013 (I think it was?!), along with a 17-40mm F4 L Canon lens. I’ve never been happy with that lens - it felt like a reduction in quality from where I had previously come (I was using a Canon 450D and a Sigma 10-20mm f4-5.6). I found the 17-40mm was never as sharp as I expected from an L lens, it suffered badly with distortion and chromatic aberration….

Last weekend was a public holiday here in the Northern Territory, and due to our light rain levels this year the Kakadu rangers and road-workers managed to get the awesome Gunlom pools open to visitors…