Power and showers are an absolute
luxury for us so we soaked up every minute in the luxury a real caravan park
offers! We headed into Katherine and then onto Nitmiluk or Katherine Gorge for a look
around. One of the challenges in being ‘ahead’ of the crowd is that there are a
number of things that aren’t quite ready yet. Each wet season paths are flooded
etc; and a heap of work needs to be done before us tourists can traipse in. So
despite there being 8 gorges, we could only get to the first one....which the
boys were oh so disappointed about! However one of the things they were
disappointed about was that the river wasn’t yet open for swimming....which
means they weren’t 100% sure they had fished all the crocs out yet!
The gorge walk was nice and short
but it was a pretty hot day so getting to the lookout where a nice breeze was
blowing was a great incentive! After a few obligatory pics we headed back,
scoffed some lunch and headed for Kakadu!
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| Some of the gazillion bats at Nitmiluk |
Another family we have been hopscotching (we had a great couple of days with them in Broome) were in Kakadu and after consulting with them we headed to a camp near Gunlom falls. A few hours later we dropped the van of and drove the last 30 or so kms down to the falls. There is a beautiful campground right at falls but the road was pretty rough so we were pretty happy we left Gator behind.
The falls are absolutely magnificent, falling 60 or 70 meters (sorry it is sooo hard to estimate the height of these things!) While there was a path leading to the top of the falls where you can swim in a plunge pool with a ‘real’ infinity edge (or whatever the name the pool marketing gurus have come up with) it was a already 4:30 and it was about an 1 ½ round trip so we decided to head to the bottom of the falls.
There were 20 or 30 people swimming there so despite the freshwater croc warning signs we dove in and Sam and I to the edge half way across to the falls. De followed and Jack was about ½ way across when he had a minor panic attack, worrying a croc was lining him up as a very lean entree. He managed to make it over and then back but not without some serious pep talks! We got back to the entry point and headed to a tree that was growing horizontally in the pool for a photo. Jack tip toed across the log like he was tight rope walking the Grand Canyon. With the pic captured Sam liked the look of one of the poor trees branches as a diving board. After about his third jump the fun of diving completely overcame Jack’s fear and he was doing the first of 20 or 30 dives! Ahh the extremes!
We headed back with just enough light to grab some fire wood and get enough coals for Jack to cook us our first camp oven damper, and it was nothing short of sensational. The crust was crunchy and the centre was light and fluffy! Yum!
We all retired pretty early. While the boys hadn’t recoginsed it we were all pretty tired as a result of losing an hour and a half crossing from WA to the NT so we all crashed early.
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