Katherine Gorge

---

Day 12 – Wednesday July 11^th – Katherine Gorge to Kakadu National Park

We woke up to find a wallaby eating one of our tourist magazines as it couldn’t find the rubbish bag we had cunningly hidden inside one of our plastic containers. After breakfast we decided we should see the Katherine Gorge while we were there, without paying lots of money for a cruise. So we loaded up with snacks and water and headed off on the Butterfly Gorge walk, which is where we would be able to have a swim. It took 1½ hours of steady walking up and down sandy and rocky tracks, one wipe out from Meg (skin off elbow and bang to head L) before we reached the secluded second gorge.

We were all on our own in the awe-inspiring gorge, swimming in the cool water, jumping from the rocks and testing out the waterproof camera. At one point two canoeists paddled past on their way to explore deeper into the gorge. Then a cruise boat gently nosed into our water and we thought that “our” section of water would be invaded by a heap of tourists jumping out of the boat for a swim. But luckily it motored away and left us in peace.

After our picnic we made our way back to the campsite – easier said than done in the 35 degree heat. The kids seemed to be on a mission and scampered along the track but even they had scarlet faces and had completely run out of puff by the time we got back. All of a sudden it was 1.30pm and we realized that we had to pack up in the fierce heat of the day and after our mammoth 12km hike. We gave the kids permission to play in the pool whilst the adults toiled away with the packing up. We were covered in sweat, sunscreen and a mixture of baby oil and dettol, which according to the lady at the Katherine Tourist Centre would be effective in keeping the mosquitos and midges away. Add red dust to the equation and you can imagine what we looked like at 3pm!

We needed another pit stop in Katherine to refill a gas bottle before we headed north en route to Kakadu. July and August is peak holiday time in NT. The weather is at its most pleasant / least aggressive and the NT school kids have 4 weeks holiday. That means the National Parks are pretty much heaving with visitors. Our aim for Kakadu was to keep to the 4WD only tracks where fewer tourists can go, with Gunlom Falls being the first destination. Our late-ish departure from Katherine and mission to avoid as many people as possible made us choose the Kambolgie campsite, 20kms before Gunlom, and we arrived about 30 mins before sunset.

Kambolgie campsite was a good choice – only 3 other sets of campers, a great fire pit and the luxury of drop toilets (but no water!). Once the sun had gone down the mossies came out in swarms and we sprayed ourselves silly with Aerogard and the baby oil/dettol mix. The other things that came out in swarms were the stars. The sky was glittering from every angle. Since Mark’s and my eye laser op it meant that we could actually see the stars without the help of glasses or contact lenses. So we decided to get out our old African mosquito net and hang it off a tree to sleep under the stars. Very cool and a little bit romantic (left the kids in the camper trailer). That is until we had the first wave of mosquito attacks. At 3am we realized that instead of the net protecting us from mossies, it was keeping us prisoner to them and we were at their mercy. It would have been an amusing sight to see us jumping around inside the net, clapping our hands together trying to kill the blighters. I think we took 10 mins to clear the net and tried to go back to sleep. It felt like we were under attack all night, as we could hear that high-pitched droning round our ears as we were being dive bombed. But we were pretty confident the attacks were coming from outside the net and we were well protected. We found out how wrong we were when the sun finally rose and we discovered several holes in the net, some were pretty small (but still bit enough for a keen mosquito to squeeze through) but there were a couple of larger holes through which a whole tribe of mossies could fit. And they did. And so it had been an eventful but memorable night in our old mossie net in the Kakadu National Park.

---

Comments

[isla harrigan]

fantastic!
What a fantastic trip you are all having. Loving the blog. Keep enjoying and keep safe. Lots of love Isla and Paul