Finally saying a reluctant goodbye to the Kimberley area, we headed back to Katherine. On the way up to Darwin we had spent a couple of days in Katherine but we didn’t do any of the Gorge tours, so this time we were planning on doing the breakfast tour down the gorge.

The Katherine Gorge is 30kms from town, and we’d already decided to stay at the caravan park there due to it’s proximity to the gorge. The park is a nice relaxed bush park, but they have added a great pool since we checked it out on our way north last year – so half an hour after setting up the van we were in the water.

There are lots of birds and wildlife in the area and they are obviously used to people, they come around scrounging for food.

The gorges and the surrounding landscape are of great cultural and ceremonial significance to the local Jawoyn people, who are the traditional owners and custodians of Nitmiluk National Park, and they jointly manage the park with the Parks and Wildlife Commission of the Northern Territory. In Jawoyn, Nitmiluk means place of the cicada “dreaming”.

Katherine Gorge is a series of 13 gorges, created 23 million years ago as water poured along tiny cracks in the earth. The National Park is full of Aboriginal rock art with paintings representing the spiritual dreaming of the Jawoyn people.

During the dry season the gorges become separated by natural dam walls as the water level falls, and you have to park your boat and walk to the next gorge where you get in another boat. However, during the wet season the gorges are interconnected, with the above mentioned dam walls being at least 8 metres under water, and then the boats can cruise from one gorge to another up to the 5th gorge. The tour we went on took in the first 2 gorges and lasted for nearly 3 hours.

Another way of travelling the river is by canoe which is very popular, and during the wet when the water’s high you can canoe right up to the 13th gorge. There are freshwater crocodiles in the gorges, but generally they are shy, or you might see them sunning themselves on the banks (we didn’t see any at all). It’s the start of the wet season there right now which means it’s crocodile nesting season, so all the beaches have signs on them to keep out. There are a couple of photos below showing the beaches, and if you look at the dimples (hollows) in the sand, this is where the crocodiles lay their eggs. It’s very rare to find Saltwater crocs in the gorge – it’s the wrong habitat for them and it’s closely monitored all the time.

I’ve run out of superlatives for this place, it’s just breathtakingly beautiful – so I’ll just put a few photos up for you to look at.

The plan was to stop somewhere around about Victoria River but somehow we missed the roadside stop so we kept going until we got to Big Horse Creek Camp Ground where we spent the night. Lovely spot right on the river – can’t swim there tho – big crocs call it home.

Going in to WA from the NT means having to go through a fruit and veg checkpoint – I’m glad I’d cleaned out the fridge before we got to the border and made sure we didn’t have any honey so the check went very well. We’d been told by others of really horrible experiences with the inspectors, but we didn’t have any issues at all.

Back to the important stuff –

We left Darwin last Saturday and our first stop was a whole hour away – Mt Bundy Station, 3.5kms from Adelaide River township. We met up with Sharon and Barry, friends we met in Tamworth a couple of years ago. They were on their way to Darwin. Barry and Sharon have the same rig as we do and parked both vans under a huge tree and settled in for 3 nights R&R.

Mt Bundy Station is lovely, with lots of trees and shady areas and has plenty of room for caravans and tents, and also offers dorm style and cabin accommodation. It’s also very popular with tour groups, especially eco and safari type tours.

The station runs horse treks and has about 20 horses, as well as buffalo (including babies of both species) and a huge Brahman bull called Nigel who loves visitors feeding him bread and fruit and scratching him behind the ears, but he’s scared of the horses and in fact runs away from them!

There is a huge variety of birdlife in the area such as magpie geese, finches, cockatoos, rosellas, etc, as well as the farm birds – geese, ducks, peacocks.

We went into town a couple of times and visited the war memorial. Adelaide River was the last line of defence against the Japanese when they bombed Darwin during the Second World War, and the war memorial is a lovely tribute to those who died at that time – it’s really sad how young so many of them were.

There is once incident which I should have posted about when it happened and David isn’t very happy with me for not posting about it then, and of course now I can’t show a photo, so it back and use your imagination to see David standing on a boat with a big grin on his face, holding a 1.2m long Jewfish.  Personally I don’t see what all the fuss is about, I did email photos to the world!.  I reckon he only caught it to upstage me!  Mind you, he still hasn’t caught a Barra!

Well, we’ve handed in our notice and will be finishing work next Friday,  September 26, and leaving Darwin on October 4.  We’re going to head to Kunnunnurra in WA for a few weeks and then we’ll head back to Adelaide.  David wants to get some work done on the truck so we’ll check it out in Adelaide, and see when it can be done.  The plan is to leave our van in Adelaide and go to Melbourne for Christmas and catch up with the family and friends for a few weeks then head back to South Australia and hopefully that will be when the truck can be worked on.  Not sure exactly where we’ll head after that – will decide later.  I hope we can catch up with as many of you as possible over the Christmas/New Year period.

We sold the yacht recently, so any fishing right now will be land fishing.  But we’ve decided a new tinny is definitely on the shopping list for next year, one slightly smaller than the one we just had so we can carry it with us.

We’ve been out and about a fair bit lately, doing some tourist stuff such as museums and markets, as well as visiting some of the beautiful areas a couple of hours outside of Darwin. We’ve also been to the Boat Show, the Darwin Show, the V8’s, and a lot of time has been spent catching up with friends for dinner etc.  The weather over the dry season has been beautiful – gorgeous sunny days and (slightly) cooler nights, but it’s now the start of the build up has arrived, although it’s a little bit early.  Some locals are predicting a ‘big’ wet this year, apparently it’s been a while since they have had a big one.  I thought last year was pretty wet, so not sure what a big one entails

We’ve had a great 12 months in Darwin, but we’re both looking forward to getting back on the road – while the time has gone quickly, staying somewhere this long wasn’t part of the plan, at least not at this stage of our travels, there’s just way too much to see to stay too long in one place.  It also wasn’t part of the plan to work so long without a break – 12 months.  We could have stayed in Melbourne and done that!  The upside was that we got to meet a lot of the locals and we’ve made some good friends.

Once we get back on the road I should be updating a bit more frequently – and with photos hopefully

We’ve been busy working and when we’re not doing that, we’re out in the boat or catching up with friends so not too exciting, but fun.  That’s probably why I haven’t updated – didn’t want to have you all nodding off while you were reading this! 

It’s now official – the Wet’s finished and the Dry Season is here.  The days are still quite warm and the mornings and late afternoon into the evenings are getting cooler.  It feels odd because I’m thinking it’s autumn with winter coming, but instead of getting rugged up, it’s superb weather and the main time of year for gardening, swimming (no crocs I believe, but where do they go?), garage and yard sales etc and people are out and about.   All the markets have started up again and it’s also the main tourist season of course.  Already the numbers of people around town is growing and I’ve been told that it gets really busy and crowded up here – that’s probably the bit I’m not looking forward to.  Prices for accommodation and tourist attractions also go up at this time of year, and I’m guessing food prices too.

I still haven’t caught a fish!   We went on a half day fishing charter over Easter – The guy on my left caught fish, David on my right caught fish – did I catch any fish?  No!  Same rods, same bait – nothing, not even a nibble – guess I just suck at fishing .   I’ll keep on trying though.  The last time we went out (about 3 weeks ago) we were just talking about heading in after catching nothing over a period of 4 hours when David caught a really big estuary cod – beautiful fish and very good eating.  It was filled with lemon and baked whole for dinner – beautiful!   He also caught 3 or 4 little fingermark snappers but they were sent home again to grow a bit more – me? Not a thing!  That day was also one of the scariest days out in the boat – we got caught in some really rough water – huge swells and troughs (well, our boat is really little, and they were huge in comparison).  Very scary and extremely uncomfortable trying to hang on so I didn’t get tossed out the boat – good thing David is a really good skipper!  I think we’ll stick to calm waters from now on.  Below are photos from the fishing charter – David catching his 2 fish and the sun rising over Darwin.  (We headed out fishing at around about 5:30am).

As you probably know, my sister Gail and her partner Russell are also in Darwin although they are at a different park from us.  It was Gail’s birthday (50th!) at the end of March – so Gail and Russell picked us up in a limo and we went to a great Darwin restaurant called Pee Wee’s at the Point – had a terrific night – great company, beautiful food and good champagne.  I’m really glad we are in Darwin the same time as they are, it was so good being here for her birthday.   Of course, the celebrations continued the following day with a bbq for their friends at their caravan park – another good night had by all.  Happy Birthday Gail.  Here’s a couple of shots – the first one is Gail and Russell inside the limo – very disco, and of course the other is my gorgeous sister Gail.

Manton Dam

 We went to Manton Dam a few weeks ago as we’d heard that it was good for fishing.  Can’t remember who told us that, but I don’t think the fish would come out until the people went home!  This is the place to go for water skiing and the day we went it was packed with families on skis, ski boards, tyres and jet skis.  I must admit I was surprised to see so many people actually in the water as there are crocs in the dam, but apparently they’re freshwater crocs and I’ve been told they generally leave people alone.  Well, that might be the case, but I wasn’t going to test the theory!  I’ll just add, I didn’t see many adults in the water, mainly kids! And they were very quickly picked up if they came off the skis or boards .  Anyway, it’s a very pretty area but it was smaller than I thought it would be and it gets really busy.  Think we’ll stick to the bay and the creeks.  Here’es a couple of snaps.

We bought some new sun protection hats this week.  Here’s David in his – very glamorous, no?

These used to be called Arafat hats, but I believe you aren’t allowed to call them that anymore.  They are now known as Frill Necks.  Not sure which name I prefer

We  also saw our first "in the wild" crocodile.  I saw him coming but by the time I’d dropped my rod and grabbed the camera he had seen us and went below the surface only to resurface a few metres away.  David estimated him to be just under 3 metres long.  You can clearly see him in one of the photos, but the other was a bit harder to see so I’ve circled him.  He started heading for a croc trap set up in the creek but another boat came around the bend and he went underwater again and disappeared.  Can’t say I was too disappointed, but on the other hand, it was nice knowing where he was.

We’ll hopefully be going out again next weekend and maybe this time we’ll actually catch something.  You’ll all know about it if it happens.  

Well I’m happy to say that the boat works really well, and more importantly, it floats really well.  We’ve been out every weekend since we got the motor serviced and I think we’re becoming addicted.  It’s a lot of fun.  Now while the boating has been successful, I’m sorry to say we’ve been total failures at fishing!  We have actually caught some fish, but due to our total cluelessness on what type of fish it is, we’ve let some return to their watery home.  We’ve also caught some that are too small so they’ve been sent home as well.  We were in BCF yesterday so I had a browse through some fish identification books and was all set today – unfortunately I didn’t catch anything to identify.  David got a cod (I think that’s what it was, it had bulgy eyes!) but it was too small, so it got returned.  This fish had the biggest mouth, which was fully open and his gob was stuffed with some other sea creature – not sure what it was, but it was quite spiney.  I thing he was being too greedy in trying to take David’s squid while his mouth was still full and got hooked. 

I forgot to take the camera today – so here’s some photos from last weekend

About an hour after these photos a storm started to come in and the waters were like this

We went to BCF yesterday to buy seats for the boat – those aluminium benches are really uncomfortable even with cushions.  We also ended up buying a canopy!  David fitted them yesterday and we test drove them today – my bum is saying thankyou! 

 Hopefully we’ll get the hang of this fishing thing and start catching something we can actually take home and put on the bbq.  A nice barra, or trevally or something.  There’s lots of good eating fish in the harbour, but obviously they aren’t hungry when we go out.   Need to learn more about this stuff.  And don’t worry, when I catch something it will be posted here – with photos!

Ok, ok, here’s an update.  You can all stop telling me off now!  I know it’s been a while, but we really haven’t been doing too much interesting stuff – mainly working, and since I’m not really keen on doing it, I didn’t think you’d all want to hear about it!

The most exciting thing that’s happened in a while is cyclone Helen which is in force over the top end right now, and to be honest, it’s not that bad.  We’ve been in worse storms in northern NSW.  I’m actually writing some of this post in the early hours of Saturday morning – it’s 3:00am here, and that’s probably because I’m just, maybe, a little nervous about staying in the van in a cyclone, but, we’ve still got electricity, so it’s not too bad 

Bugger – as soon as I wrote the previous sentence, the power went out!  It’s now Saturday afternoon and the power has just recently come back on – not sure what time exactly as we were out having a sticky to see what damage had been done.  Anyway, we survived Helen ok.  I think the tripod and the additional rear legs David made up for the van while we were in Adelaide have really paid their way – the van was rock solid. 

During our drive this morning we saw there are a few trees down, but didn’t see any property damage, although we heard on the radio that there were some areas with houses that had lost their roof.   There was also a bit of a surf today which is really unusual in Darwin.  Didn’t see anyone surfing though.  Lots of people were out and about, probably partly because they were having a sticky beak the same as us and partly because it’s so lovely and cool. 

Anyway, Happy New Year to everyone.  We hope you all managed to have a break over the Christmas and New Year period and spent it doing lots of relaxing fun things.  We had a very quiet Christmas this year, spending Christmas day with friends we’ve made up here.  It’s the first time we’ve been away from everyone in the family so it was really different for us.  However, we had a really nice relaxing day with lots of good food and wine.

For New Year we had a park party and about 40 people in the park (I didn’t even realise there were that many in the park!) all got together.

The downside to the night was that we got broken into – not the van, but the en-suite where we keep our Waeco fridge/freezer and our electric grill etc.  We keep the ensuite locked when we aren’t there, but for some reason we both thought the other had locked up.   The interesting thing was, all that was taken was a leg of lamb, some marinating chicken wings, a bottle of wine and a few cans of pepsi. Maybe they wanted to have a party too.  Strange they didn’t take lobster, prawns, squid and scallops we had in the freezer section!  I think we might have interrupted them.  At least they put the lid down on the fridge, so all the frozen stuff was fine.  Obviously very caring thieves!

We have done a couple of interesting things while we’ve been in Darwin.  We went to Litchfield National Park, 130km south of Darwin, and had a great day.  Went swimming at Wangi Falls, a beautiful swimming hole and picnic spot.  It’s a little daunting when you come across your first sign about the possibility of crocs in the water, but there were plenty of people in the water already including lots of children and babies which we figured would be much more tender and sweeter to the crocs than us, so decided we were safe!  The water was fantastic – lovely and cool, and it’s a really pretty area.  We decided to swim over to the falls, which didn’t look very far away, but obviously they were because we were shattered when we got there and had to hang around the falls for while until our breathing returned to normal so we could swim back.  Maybe a sign, like the ones on car mirrors saying “falls are farther than they look” might be useful or maybe something along the lines of  “know your fitness level before you do something stupid” might be even better!  Anyway, we, ok, it was mainly me, (David was patiently waiting for me) eventually made it back.

We visited most of the attractions in the park including:

Florence Falls, a double waterfall cascading into a swimming hole which you can access via 160 steps, or you can check it all out from the viewing platform.

Tolmer Falls, home to colonies of Ghost Bats and the rare Orange Horseshoe Bats.  There are signs asking you not to enter the falls area as the national park is trying to preserve the Orange Horseshoe Bats habitat.

Buley Rockhole – a series of cascading waterfalls and rock holes, some of which are shallow and others are plunge pools.  A gorgeous spot where we spent a few hours – along with a bus full of English tourists.

The Lost City – a fascinating place full of sandstone block and pillar formations which look like the ruins of some ancient civilisation.  We were the only people there the day we went.  We spent a while wandering around.  You can only access the lost city via a 10km 4WD road, but well worth it.

Magnetic Termite Mounds – these mounds are different to the ones in the photos we took on the way up to Darwin.  These mounds are broad and flat and their edges point in a north-south orientation.  This is believed to act as a built in temperature control mechanism allowing only the least possible surface area to be exposed to the sun.

On the way home from the park we went via Batchelor, (which must be one of the tidiest towns I’ve seen), to Adelaide River where we headed to the pub for a drink and dinner.  The pub has a buffet for $16.50 all you can eat.  We’re not that keen on buffets, but this one is really worth doing. 

The Adelaide River pub is also home to the stuffed (as in taxidermy) remains of the water buffalo that starred in the original Crocodile Dundee movie.  I’m sure you have all wondered what happened to this animal – so now you know – he’s well and truly stuffed, and stands on the bar at the Adelaide River pub so tourists can get their photo taken with him.

We had great day, and I’d recommend Litchfield to everyone visiting Darwin.  We’ll definitely be going back again.  I heard the other day that Wangi Falls is now closed because of the volume of water from the wet – the current is too strong and also, it’s difficult to monitor the crocs with that much water.  We’ll wait until the dry season!

Here’s some images of Litchfield and Adelaide River Pub.

While we’ve been here we also went to a Defence Force concert which was really good – these are the guys who go to places like East Timor to entertain the troops.  All the acts were really good, but the stand outs, for me at least, were The McClymonts,  http://www.themcclymonts.com.au/  and Amber Lawrence, http://www.amberlawrence.com/  so being fans of both these acts we were rapt to see them live.  All the performers mentioned how honoured they were to be invited to be part of this group which I thought was really nice.

What else has been happening?  Well, wanna see where David is working   Check it out …

We bought a little boat ( our baby yacht).  David sent the motor off for a service and we got it back yesterday – yep the day of the cyclone!   We were planning on taking it out today – might wait til the water settles down first.  We’ll be buying a canopy and a couple of comfortable seats for it in the next week or so, and then David will put a false floor and some marine carpet in it.  It’s a 3.8m Spacer – a few years old, but pretty good condition and we got it at a good price.  It’ll be good for going out on Darwin Harbour and down some of the creeks.

We went fishing with friends a few weeks ago, (in their boat) out in Darwin harbour – and I’ve never seen such a variety of fish like we caught (well, ok, I’ve never caught any fish before) but we were catching parrot fish, moon (or bat) fish, little stripeys, Barra, sucker fish (the kind that stick to sharks and whales) and other’s I didn’t know the name of – all of which we threw back (I didn’t kiss them though).  The Barra would have been ok except it was undersize at 50cm – they have to be more than 55 apparently.  We had a lot of fun and we’re looking forward to taking baby yacht out, and catching our dinner.  I’ll show you the photos when that happens!

I’ve wanted to see a crocodile since we’ve been up here, so we went to Crocoydlus Park.  They do crocodile feeding so you get to see the crocs jumping out of the water for their food – I never knew crocs could move so quickly or jump so high.  We spent just over an hour there and learnt a lot about crocs, the most important one being to stay away from them!

While we’ve been here we have also checked out food places – there are a few good places to eat, but my favourites are the markets where there are a large number of Asian (mainly Thai) stalls selling fantastic food and drinks as well as selling fresh fruit and veg.  Hmmm, must remember to take photos of the markets!

One of my new year resolutions is to carry the camera with me all the time – which I’ve started doing.  Now I just need to use it 

Bye for now