Katherine Gorge, and on to Kakadu and Litchfield

  Katherine, Australia
Thursday, April 3, 2008

Long sealed road

After our week in the dry desert we spent a full day in the car watching the scenery turn from the bright red dirt of the Outback to light green grasses dotted with huge termite hills.

Termites and their castles

The weather went from hot to humid and hot. As the evening came upon us we chose to drive an extra 150km to make it to the wet.  It was the only night driving we did.  You are warned of the possibility of kangaroos jumping into the road and most say that the likely hood of it should keep you off the road all together.  They have been known to destroy the car and you see many cars driving along with a roo bar, a huge metal front bumper.  We were in a rental with no insurance and while the road trains ( trucks carrying up to 4 containers) flew by, we had our eyes plastered to the road.  The sky lit up with lightning and we ran right into our first tropical storm.  Luckily the rain started after our tent was up and we were safely under roof sipping a cold beer wondering why we chose to rush to humid sticky nights in a tent with no fan.  Unluckily our tent pole broke while I was putting it together and the fear of heavy rains to come had us on edge.
We fell asleep still a bit stressed and definitely sweaty.
The next morn we took a dip in a "thermal"spring.  The spring is at a constant 34 degrees Celsius and pushes out 30 million gallons of water a day.  Funny enough it is not heated by volcanic lava but only retains the temperature of the ground it comes from.  No wonder we were so hot. 
With the new surroundings came a new sign at almost every water way.  A person swimming with an red X through it and a crocodile with its mouth open.  BEWARE of the salt water crocodile he hunts and kills.  They can stay under water for more than 30 minutes so do not assume the water is safe.  We left the dry desert to come to streams and rivers we were afraid to swim in. Ah well the scenery goes on for miles and at least there are some trees to sit under.
Most of our trip we hopped from place to place searching out the few places we could swim and spending as much time there as possible.  We found our first cool dip at Katherine Gorge.

Our view

The river snakes through a gash in the endless eucalyptus forest and without too much trouble you can walk up to get a great view of it.  To try to escape the heat we took our hike early.  It was only 8am but we were sweating as we trekked over the flat rocky barren edge of the gorge.  We were rewarded by an awesome vista and a crocodile free swimming hole. The little creek was full of water and the pool was deep enough to dive into.  The sun had not broken over the waterfalls edge and we enjoyed a refreshing 15 minutes alone before walking back in a sweltering heat.

Our rockhole

Next we went to Kakadu.  No swimming due to flooded land and crocs everywhere but we saw as much as we could.  Kakadu is a special site for the Aboriginal people and has incredible rock art.  It is also the only entire river system protected as a National Park, making it home to tons of wildlife and the largest wetland I have ever seen. The river goes out to the ocean which is over 100 km from its start and almost the entire thing is under water during the wet season.  We came at the end of the rain so didnt get to see too much but still got an idea of the vastness of the place with the little lookouts we climbed.
Due to my fear and curiousity, which included two nights of restless sleep over whether a croc was going to eat us or not, we had to take a cruise down one of the rivers to get a glimpse of these ancient predators. On the Jumpin Croc tour which was only a few km's out of Kakadu we got just that.  One of the ones we saw was a 60 year old male named Agro who was over 20 ft.  Just amazing.  The tour feeds the crocs some pork and for their gift the crocks use their powerful tail to hull their entire bodies out of the water.

Jumpin' Croc

Super touristy but oh soo cool.
After our face to face with some man eaters we again went searching for some safe waters.  Lichfield National Park was the place to go.

Little Yellow

We set up camp only a few meters from a raging gigantic waterfall and spent the next two days swimming.

Relaxing at the pool

The area is so amazing, like most of the north it is primarily sandstone and the waterfalls seem to fall into the earth without any real mountains or steep climbs.  Most of them have huge deep pools and ways to slip underneath the rushing water and be pushed around by the extremely strong current.  Its as though the water cant escape fast enough and all the rain from the wet season is just pouring out into the flat lands.