All Seasons Katherine

Did the whole trip back to Alice in reverse. Nothing much to report except that we had to pull someone over whose trailer door had popped open, and hoped that we didn't look like shady characters. Oh and we had to pull into the gravel for a road train coming the other way who had a house ...

... stopover for us as we can only travel around 300km's in a day as it is too much for the kids (and us) for one day. Timber Creek was really interesting! The caravan park/hotel/restuarant/petrol station was a in a small town on the Victoria Hwy with mountains on both sides of the road, and the caravan sites were right next to the Victoria River which was a small flowing river with loads of tropical trees ...

... of paddling 20 strokes and then resting for 10, all the time keeping up the steady chant of "left, right" that was necessary to keep both paddlers synchronised. (Hilary - fed on a reading-diet rich in Arthur Ransome - was instead chanting "port, starboard", although as the going got a little tougher the extra syllable began to seem more effort than it was worth.)

Our day was as delightful as you could possibly ...

... von dem in der Trockenzeit hauptsaechlich insgesamt 18 "Schwimmloecher" (Gorges) ueberbleiben. Uns praesentiere sich der Katherine River aber als recht maechtiger Strom - vor allem wenn man bedenkt, dass es der erste Fluss war, den wir seit unserer Ankunft im Center vor mehr als einer Woche sahen. Wir machten eine kurze Wanderung und sprangen kurz ins Wasser. So richtig viel Freude hatten wir aber nicht dabei weil uns der Fluss verdammt nach Krokodil ...

... river - which we repeadidy question being anywhere near) passes a number of information plaques, that milk the limited history of the town of Katherine to every degree possible. One such plaque is posted infront of a rectangular caged area approx 6by 3ft. The plaque informs us that this is the site of Maggie, the aboriginal wife of an early settler was laid to rest. The plaque goes on to state how the site was chosen by her husband, whilst he himself instructed that he be buried at a ...

... for a quick swim before being whisked off to the next place of interest.

After two days at Litchfield I moved to Kakadu National Park. This is the most famous of the parks in the Northern Territory it is very large although most points of interest are reasonably close together however you have to do a great deal of driving to get to them. I stayed at a good campsite in the unremarkable mining town of Jabaru which is situated ...

... grabs a huge log which he then uses to clobber the toad to death whilst evryone else cheered! Apparently that's what we're supposed to do if we see one coz they are a danger to all other insects and animals and are swarming over the state borders so controls need to be taken. You can even sign up to Toad Busters, which is a voluntary organisation who go out hunting for the Cane Toad and then collect them in buckets before gasing them to death- in a humane way of course!

... the ring with the bucking broncos who had to retrieve the rider and them contain the horse after the ride was finished.  Indeed one of these two "pick up crew" riders did get pulled off his horse and looked to be gored or kicked but after a few moments he rubbed his ribs and gallantly mounted again!  Steve has loads of footage of this event as we were there for 4 hours!  I tried to take photos but it was all very fast and my little camera could not keep up.  It was also very hot ...

So I arrived in Katherine about 9:00am on Friday. Claire, a couchsurfing host, picked me up from the train station. She's 28 I think it was, and lives in Katherine with her boyfriend Marc, who's originally from Spain. She took me with her to an organic farm where she was pciking up vegetables with her friend to sell at the markets the next day. When we got there we ended up hopping up on the back of the truck and driving out into the fields to pick some organic cucumbers ourselves, as they ...