Blogs from Katherine, Northern Territory, Australia, Oceania

Katherine lies at the crossroads of the Savannah Way that runs east–west from Cairns to Broome and the Explorers Way that runs north–south from Darwin to Adelaide through Alice Springs. The town is thus a magnet for Grey Nomads from the southern states, seeking to flee from winter. Our first adventure was to drive out to Nitmiluk National Park (formerly Katherine Gorge) to do a short hike and to enquire about boat tours of the gorge. The first available boat tour was the day after we were scheduled to leave Katherine, and so we booked the tour and then negotiated with Discovery Caravan Park to extend our stay by one day. After booking the tour, we hiked up a series of very steep steps up the side of the gorge, to Baruwei Lookout, which overlooks Katherine ... read more

A short walk from our hostel to where we were picking up the rental car and there were no cars there. It was okay as we and another couple were collected and brought to the airport car rental place and worked out well for us as they had pool noodles to lend us for our trips to any of the springs and natural pools that were around (we were told to purchase them for this reason). A quick stop for breaky and food supplies and we were on our way to Katherine, a 3 + hour journey. Parts of the highway you can go 130 km/hr which at first seemed fast but by the end of the trip when we had to slow down to 100 felt normal and 100km slow as. We passed half a ... read more

It has been quite some period of time since Australians have had the opportunity to board a plane for a bit of adventure. Of course international travel is still off the agenda for the foreseeable future, but the respective States are starting to open up their borders to domestic tourists, and importantly to the money they spend. So I thought after 18 months without a break here's a chance to visit the iconic Northern Territory of my own country, after 20 long years having not even stopped in to say g'day! I have great memories of my last visit, and with a good deal of excitement masked up and boarded a Qantas flight from Sydney to Darwin to commence a new adventure. There have been countless travel moments in my blogging life where prior flights passed ... read more

Day 7 - Katherine / Kakadu Today is our last full day in Katherine and our last night here. Tomorrow we will head up to Darwin. This morning we had booked a Two Gorge tour of the Katherine Gorge (now called Nitmiluk Gorge). This tour took just over two hours to traverse two gorges On unsinkable barges (I hope they are unsinkable as there are crocodiles under the boat). We had to walk over from one Gorge to the other to get over the natural rock dams to get to the second barge (yes we had to get on two barges both on the way up and way back). The scenery was spectacular and we spotted 4 crocodiles. We were told by the guide they were freshwater species and therefore we would not be killed by ... read more

Day 5 - Katherine. / Kakadu Today’s temperature was low 30s. Shorts and T/shirts time. We are not missing the Melbourne weather. Today we went to The Outback Experience show. We had booked this show from Melbourne based on online trip advisor reviews and the show did not disappoint. The show setting was a real stock horse and dog training farm. We were entertained by Tom Curtain two-time Australian Country Music Golden Guitar winner and horseman extraordinaire. He provided us with a taste on the inner workings of horse training and he used a real scenario and trained a horse in front of our very eyes. He also spent some time working with kelpie and border collie dogs. What a great show and it went for 3 hours. Lunch was in Katherine town and then after ... read more