Katherine (Friday 27th June - Sunday 29th June)

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Friday afternoon we packed up our gear and headed back to Luke and Beth’s place to accompany their team down to Katherine as they complete in the Ultra Challenge - A unique race where individuals or teams cover 100km in a day in a series of events such as swim, run, kayak.
It was a strange feeling to drive down the Stuart Highway out of Darwin with the thought of ‘when will we be back here again?’ Who knows? But our love of this place certainly pulls us back time and time again.
Luke had booked us all into Knott’s Crossing resort for a couple of nights, a change of scenery from the van. So we piled ourselves and our gear into the little room - bigger than the van but not by much.
Saturday was race day and the team were all off early, the Collopy support crew joined the team ready for the start of Beth’s run and then we followed on to each of the change over points including Luke’s mighty kayak effort and the final leg which see’s their team come in second. A fun day which brings back lots of memories of the times when Matt completed in the event during our ‘Territory Days’.
We joined the crew for the race dinner that night and are reminded of the laid back, family friendly environment that is the Territory. You can’t beat a dinner under the stars in perfect dry season weather with lots to eat, BYO drinks and plenty of room for the kids to run and play.
The next morning we packed all of our belongings back into the van ready to begin our trek down the centre and back home.

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