Friday July 18th "Nitmiluk (Katherine Gorge) National Park"

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After packing up we headed east of town about 30 kilometres to Nitmiluk (Katherine Gorge) National Park. We asked a ranger at the visitor centre what path she would suggest if you could only take one. She suggested Butterfly gorge. We made lunch and prepared for a full day of walking. The path was very rugged and hilly; however it was well worth it. The walls were at least 30 metres tall and straight up. The water was very deep and comfortable to swim in. We hopped into the water and swam to the other side exploring little shelves on the canyon walls. We swam upstream and came across a small beach. Once we got to our feet we realized that the beach was a crocodile breeding area. Luckily it wasn’t breeding time! After taking full advantage of all there was to see and do we ate lunch and started the walk back to the info centre. We went back into town to buy groceries before continuing north of town towards Darwin. We had to choose how we were going to attack the north. If you can relate it to a diamond shape Katherine is the bottom of the Diamond, Kakadu National Park is the right side, Litchfield is the left side and Darwin is at the top. We had to do one of the two national parks before going to Darwin so that we didn’t have to double back. We decided to do Kakadu National Park. We turned off into the massive national park. It is extremely large at just less than five million acres. Instead of 60-80 km/hr roads there were two 110km/hr roads. The entrance is thirty kilometres after the turn off and before you enter there is a very twisty road which still for some reason has a 110 km/hr speed limit. I drove along that at a pretty good speed. Just before the park entrance we found a caravan park. With the sun just about to set and no idea how far it was to the next park we decided to stop and leave the park for tomorrow.

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