Blogs from Katherine Gorge, Katherine, Northern Territory, Australia, Oceania

We have covered more than 4,700 kms since I last wrote, driving through some of Australia’s vast, dry terrain in temperatures generally exceeding 35 degrees (and the nights often don’t feel much cooler!)! The car drives have been long, at times a bit challenging, but, as a reward, we find ourselves today - by default, but more about that later - at a beautiful oasis, complete with pool and electricity (which means aircon), and have decided not to step into our car for two days - bliss. Having said that, the country we have been travelling through has been very interesting, with bright red earth in many parts; a landscape which, at first glance, looks bleak, but on closer inspection is interspersed with brightly coloured plants, trees with bark that is almost iridescent and variously textured, ... read more

I spent another day in Kununurra relaxing in the sunshine before hopping on a bus in the morning to Katherine. I got to Katherine in the early evening. I lugged all my stuff to my hostel. There are a lot more aboriginals up in this area. They hang around in groups all over the town. Katherine is an interesting town. It's not very big and there isn't much to do besides go to the gorge out of town. I was up early the next morning and on a bus out to Katherine gorge which they call nitmiluk in aboriginal. I walked around the information center before making my way down to the boat launch. I decided to do a 3 gorge tour. There isn't much walking involved except 400m between the gorges. We all piled onto ... read more

Kakadu to Darwin then Katherine Okay, so there is quite a bit of travel to be covered here. We would have blogged earlier, however we were BUSY in Darwin and there is no OPTUS coverage from Katherine to Broome. Maybe TELSTRA for then next outback trip .... So our last day in Kakadu we left our van set up at Jabiru and headed off to the East Alligator River. We checked out Cahill's Crossing which is the only access to Arnhem Land via road. The river was about 50cm deep, pretty easy for any 4WD, however we would have to get a permit to go into the brother's land. So we drove to the jetty to board the Guluyambi Boat Cruise. It was excellent, our guide, Neville, from Arnhem Land, took us down stream to Cahill's ... read more

This morning we got up and hired canoes to head up Katherine Gorge. It was quite hard work, but the views were amazing. Heather and I were in one canoe, and Max and Jannick were in the other. The others did the hike instead of canoeing. We finally arrived at the little inlet where we could get out of the canoes (all the earlier spots were taken by crocodiles who had nests on the beaches) and went swimming. It was really nice to cool off after the hard work it took to get there. From there it was back to camp for lunch, then pack up and head further north to Darwin. We stopped at Edith Falls on the way for a swim, where there were fish that nibbled all the dead skin off your feet. ... read more