Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Since Broome the landscape has fascinated me as we drove through. It seems to belong in a different era, an epoch when dinosaurs roamed or cavemen hunted sabre tooth tigers. There's something very old and untouched about the place. I haven't photographed the region much as I am very doubtful the pictures would do the area justice, the vastness, the isolation, the very unfriendly to the ill prepared, unable to be caught in a picture.
The drive to Katherine was quite eventful. We stopped at the Victoria River for a photo, the cause of the previous road closures, where the waters witness marks were very high (I knew I should've brought my canoe).We crossed the border and took the obligatory photo of the sign. A little further on just out of the corner of my eye (do eyes really have corners? a debate for another time I think) I saw someone waving for help. I turned back feeling like a welsh human version of Lassie or the Littlest Hobo, traveling the country helping the needy. It was two dutch girls and they had a duff alternator on their hired campervan. Not being a member of the A team, able to make an alternator, or an entirely new combat car for that matter, out of the materials at hand we told them to stay at their van and when we got into phone reception we'd phone them a tow truck. It was quite a coincidence that about 50 metres down the road there was a sign for ' Katherine Towing', we stopped and jotted down the number.
A relaxing evening followed with a good nights sleep, a rarity in a 15ft box!
We let nature wake us in the morning (Nature ended up being an articulated lorry compression braking on a nearby road, but it sounded romantic) at an unknown time as there was a time difference in the Northern Territory we were blissfully unaware of. Ready for a days sightseeing and first stop was Katherine Gorge. We got there and disappointingly found out the majority of the gorges (of which there were 13) were closed due to flooding. There was a boat trip running but the trip was dramatically shortened and they offered no discount, we kindly told them where to stick it.
We opted to walk to a look-out but Gem was suffering from numerous mozzie bites. I plonked her on a comfortable looking rock and ventured along the rocky path alone. I got to a little sandy beach by the rivers edge, which turns out was the look out, and got my photo of the Gorge, quite frankly s***ting myself at the thought of what was lurking in the brown torrents a matter of feet away. I thought of a tourist brochure I'd read an hour before where it said "swimming is allowed...with care", now, my take on this little extract is 'swimming is allowed if your an idiot and while you are swimming around in your retarded manner try your best not to look like a McSnappy burger otherwise Rose petal or Buttercup (names affectionately given to the 5meter beasts that lurk in such waters by people such as Steve Irwin) may, in one foul sweep of a hundred or so sharp enamel protrusions, eat you and! This would of course increase the standard of the gene pool for the human race so maybe it's not such a bad thing after all.
I met back up with Gem and back to the car. The 30km drive back to the town from the gorge saw a few photo opportunities. A crashed plane and a bomb crater crater from WWII inflicted by the Japanese affectionately littered with beer bottles. I don't know what the pilot was aiming for but he missed by a very long way, unless the strategically placed field had some wartime significance. We found most attractions closed due to the flooding, the hot springs and the gorge to name but a few, and we came to the conclusion that the area needed two tourist brochures, one for the wet and one for the dry seasons.
After some shopping and a bite to eat we went to the pool to cool off a little. There was little need as walking back to the van a small storm erupted and emptied its cargo in our vicinity. It was refreshing and gave much needed rest bite from an almost inhumane humidity.
Gem's note: Strange place Katherine, everything even remotley touristy seemed to be closed for the 'wet' so had very little to offer, although I must admit I was secretly grinning from ear to ear when I found out that the 6 kilometer (one way) hike to the gorge was closed due to flood, I have a feeling Rich would have dragged me kicking and screaming on that one if it'd been open. So on to Darwin!!!
- comments