Another occasional post from Katherine

11 August

This afternoon we decided to have a look at the Cutta Cutta caves, about 30 kms south of Katherine. Not that we were all that interested in the caves.  After all, we have seen the Janolan Caves and the Margaret River caves and, at the end of the day, a cave is a cave is a cave.  Rather, we thought we would go for a drive at the hottest part of the day so that we could enjoy the car air conditioning. Not the right motivation.

To our complete surprise, we had a really enjoyable experience.  Sure the Cutta Cutta caves have nothing on the Janolan and Margaret River Caves in terms of their sheer size and the drama of their many cave features.  They are easily accessible down a staircase of about 60 steps and are quite compact.   And that's what makes them so enjoyable.  They are very easy to move through and their features are not overwhelming but are rather understated and subtle.

They are unique in that they are Australia's only dry tropical caves.  Water certainly drips slowly through the roof helping to form a modest collection of subtly coloured stalactites, stalagmites, drapes and all the other features found in limestone caves.  However, during the dry season at least, there is no flowing water at the bottom of the caves.

The enjoyability of the occasion was contributed to, in no small way, by our guide's commentary.  It was very informative without being too technical and drawn-out.  We couldn't believe, when we were ready to return to the surface, that he had been speaking to us and guiding us along the cave system for an hour.  It felt like 10 minutes.

There is a human face in the rock formation.  Can you see it?

This little fellow is a rock wallaby.  We saw him as we were entering the caves.  He was still waiting for us when we came out.  He was very obliging about having his photo taken.  He waited until the last photo was taken before hopping off.

This is a great example of what the Northern Territory bush near Katherine looks like during the Dry.

Katherine

7 August,

I know I said in my last post on 31 July that I would probably not be making any more posts.  However, yesterday, we visited the magnificent Nitmiluk Gorge on the Katherine River in the country of the Jawoyn people.  I could not let this go without posting some of the photos.

Before I get to that, I have to tell you that we may have turned a corner in solving our health and mechanical issues.  Bev is feeling much better and we are hoping that this will continue to be the case until we get home.  We also learned yesterday, that the process of repairing our car is now underway.  The necessary spare parts should arrive in Darwin on Wednesday and the car should be ready to be picked up on Friday.  The other good news is that the NRMA will meet the cost of our additional accommodation and the cost of our rental car until we actually pick up the car.

Now about Nitmiluk, which is the Jawoyn word for "Cicada Country".  The gorge is actually a system of thirteen gorges on the Katherine River within the Nitmiluk National Park.  Three of these gorges are navigable by sightseeing boats that each hold about 60 people.

We elected to tour the first two gorges, which are separated from each other by a flat and easy 600 metre "portage" that takes you under the foot of a sheer sandstone cliff the soars dramatically skyward for about 100 meters.  At one point, the cliff face is adorned with some rock art that has been  dated at 8000 years old.  This is young by Jawoyn standards.  There is at least one place in the Park where the rock art has been radio carbon dated at 45,000 years.

Anyway, enough from me.  Here are the photos.

The cliffs of the first gorge.

Almost at the end of the first gorge and the beginning of the second

The high cliffs that tower above the path from the first to second gorge

rock art of the face of the cliff

awi

A Wider view of the placement of the rock art.  Can you see it?  The figures shown are much larger than you would normally see and are placed well out of human reach on the face of the cliff.  How did they get there?  I have not seen any evidence to indicate that tall ladders and scaffolding were part of 8000 year old aboriginal technology.

This part of the second gorge is known as the "Katherine Canyon".  I found it to be the most spectacular part of a very spectacular gorge system.

The cliffs opposite the entrance to the Canyon

Katherine - It just keeps getting better

31 July,

Today is Friday and we have been here since Monday and we have had a most eventful time.

When we got here Bev's upset tummy, which she had been suffering from for some time to varying degrees, flared up and she decided that she would have see a doctor.  We couldn't get an appointment for some days.  However, they do have a walk-in clinic here that just happened to be open that night.  The doctor ordered some blood tests and an ultrasound and we are now awaiting the results.  He thought that it might be a duodenal ulcer or pancreatitis.  Interestingly, the ultrasound showed up some gall stones so they have been put  into the mix. Whatever it is, she still feels very sick especially in the mornings.

But wait, there's more.

On Wednesday, she was feeling a little better and so we decided to drive up to Edith Falls, which are about 60 kms north of Katherine just off the Stuart Highway.  We had gone about 40 kms when we heard a loud bang and the car came to a stop, luckily at a point where there was a wide shoulder.  The engine would start and had plenty of power.  The car just would not move regardless of what gear was selected.  Yep, you've guested it, the automatic transmission had packed up.  Something you are not entitled to expect in a car with less than 55,000 kms on the clock.

I won't bore you all the tedious details of what happened next.  The important thing is that we had happened to come to a stop at place that had a small amount of mobile signal, enough for me to be able to contact the NRMA.  Once I did that, things started to happen, just very slowly.  Eventually a truck turned up and took us and the car back to Katherine.  The NRMA arranged a rental car for us and arranged to have the car transported to the Hyundai dealership in Darwin.  It was in Darwin by 8.00 am the next morning.

At this point we encountered a big problem.  Their workshop is so busy, they could not even look at the car to determine exactly what went wrong and what has to be done to fix it in terms of ordering in spare parts (or a whole new transmission).  They are so overbooked that they cannot actually start working on the car until 10 August.

So here we are, stuck in Katherine.  Actually, it is not a bad place in which to be marooned.  It has everything we could want in terms of shopping and the caravan park is very comfortable.  The weather, while quite hot in the afternoons, is much more pleasant than Darwin or  Kakadu, much less humid.  Best of all, the town has a very good Coffee Club and needless to say we have become frequent patrons.  We seem to be falling into a kind of routine and that helps the time pass.  We will probably find that our enforced stay will turn out to be a welcome rest.

Of course, things could have been much worse.  The gear box could have failed while we were towing the van on the way home.  Imagine being stuck on the side of the road at a point where there was nothing but nothing a 1000 kms in any direction.  It makes my blood run cold just thinking about it.  All we can do now is go with the flow and not overthink it!!

We will try to visit some of the closer beauty spots such as the Katherine Gorge and Edith Falls.  However, that will depend upon how Bev feels. Of course, we will be coming home as quickly as possible following the shortest route, which will still be almost 4000 kms and we will not be stopping to see the sights.  That being the case, I think that is will be the last post for this for this trip.

I have just a couple of final pictures.  They are of the local hot springs which are not all that far from the caravan park.

Also can somebody tell me what bird is this?  It looks very much like a Lorikeet, but the colours are a  little different.

Nourlangie Rock or should I say, Barrunggui and Anbangbang

27 July,

Yesterday, we went for drive from Cooinda to a place that the travel literature and road signs name as "Nourlangie Rock", about 40 kms away, to look at the aboriginal rock art galleries for which the area is famous.

The Rock itself is spectacular, rising in dizzying sheer cliffs.  It is made of sandstone which has been weathered into fantastic shapes.  At the base are several large and deep rock shelters that thousands of generations of the local indigenous people have decorated with intriguingly designed ochre pictures.  According to the experts, they have been doing this for at least 40,000 years.  Some of the more recent pictures we saw, have been there for at least 1000 years.  The pictures in these galleries show a much more sophisticated quality of design than those I saw at Uluru or have seen in South Eastern Australia.

Apart from the pictures, the track around the base of the rock rises to a lookout that gives amazing views across Kakadu to the Arnhem Land escarpment.  I enjoyed this short walk around the Rock and through the bush.  But I have to say I found it hot and I was glad I was not doing it later in the year when it would have been much hotter and more difficult.

Today, we arrived in Katherine with a short stop for morning tea in Pine Creek.  This is a rather interesting place.  It is the site of the last gold rush in Australia.  As you drive in you pass the rusting remains of the poppet head and mine workings that were built when underground mining commenced.  There is also a strong railways flavour to the town.

The journey across to Pine Creek along the Kakadu Highway was not the easiest I have had on this trip.  For the last half, at least, the country becomes very hilly and the road, which is quite narrow in places, snakes its way through the hills in a series of many bends and sweeping curves.  It is definitely not a place in which to use cruise control.  Thankfully things got much better once we reached the Stuart Highway.

We are staying at the Katherine Big 4 caravan park.  It is a big park that certainly lives up to the standards we have come to expect from Big 4.

We made an interesting discovery when we set about unhitching and setting up the caravan.  When I went to lower the wind-down stabiliser legs, I discovered that one of them was missing. I couldn't believe my eyes.  The whole of the assembly, which is normally bolted to the chassis, had dropped off leaving nothing behind but a couple of sheered off bolts.  And before the rest of you caravanners make the obvious statement, no, I have never pulled the caravan away  having neglected to raise the legs.  Anyway, I went into the town and bought a set of jack stands and shoved one of them under the van in place of the missing leg. It seems to be doing the trick.  I am hoping that, this being the third mishap we have experienced on this trip, nothing more will happen.

Time for some photos.

The Anbangbang Gallery and rock shelter

These and the images in the photos below are some of artwork in this gallery

Nourlangie Rock from the lookout. Or is this the correct name?

The Arnhem Land Escarpment to the east of the Kakadu National Park.

If this is so, why does the Park management persist in calling this place by the wrong name in all the Park signage and literature.  It seems to me a simple thing to correct.

Yellow Water Cruise

26 July,

As I foreshadowed in the last post, we did the Yellow Water cruise yesterday.  Yellow Water is a billabong which is fed by Jim Jim Creek and with a narrow entrance into the nearby South Alligator River.  There are two other Alligator Rivers up here, the East and the West Alligators

For the information of my overseas readers, there are no alligators in Australia, just crocodiles, bloody big ones!  So why call these rivers the Alligator Rivers.  An early Australian explorer, one Phillip Parker King, discovered the rivers.  He had spent some time in those parts of the world where alligators were common and so when he saw crocodiles in these waters, he assumed they were also alligators and so named the rivers.

The operators of these cruises promise to give their customers some close up experience of the wide diversity of animal and vegetative life that exist in these World Heritage-listed wet lands.  And live up to their promises they definitely did.  We saw a wide variety of birds, not just on the wing, but also  perched in trees and and resting on the river banks.  Of course, crocodiles were everywhere, cruising through the water with just their backs and eyes showing, sleeping in the shallows and lurking under bushes on the river banks.

Yellow Water is also a photographers paradise and the cruise takes you to areas that otherwise would be inaccessible.  Timing is also important for photographers, those two hours after sunrise and before sunset in which the light is at its best.  The tour operators know this and so provide two cruises at this time of the day.  We went on the 4.30 pm sunset cruise.  This two hour cruise ends as the sun goes down over Yellow Water.  The guide makes sure that your boat is positioned at exactly the right spot and waits as the sun goes down and the photographers on board get busy taking, what they hope, will be the shot of a life time.

Here a a few of the images I made.  I hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I enjoyed making them.

These are the cruise water craft.  Everyone gets a good view in perfect safety

Yellow Water Billabong from the cruise departure point.  What is a Billabong? Google it!!!

A typical view across the Kakadu wetlands from the South Alligator River.  The plants in the foreground are lotus plants.

Another typical view

The boat was able to get very close to this fellow as he cruised along looking for his dinner.  He is over 3 metres long which makes him a very serious crocodile.

You know what they see, "Never smile at a crocodile"

Below are some of the birdlife that we encountered as we cruised along.

This is a Jabiru.  Our guide explained that Jabirus are members of the stork family and the name Jabiru is not aboriginal but portuguese

Pied cormorant

Greater Egret

A pair of sea eagles

Sea eagle nest with, perhaps, a sea eagle chick just peaking over the top

A Jakana or Jesus Bird.  These little birds have very large feet that allow them to walk across water lily leaves giving the impression that they are walking on water, hence the name.

Jacana chicks

Brolgas, heads down,  feeding.  Brolgas are native Australian cranes

A darter, one of the many fish eaters in the wetlands

This little fellow is a Kingfisher.  Sorry about the apparent lack of focus, but I had to take this photo at the 270 mm end of my zoom telephoto lens and then bring up the image until it was big enough to make a photo presentable enough to show of the bird's colours.  The original photo, before trimming is shown below.

He's in there somewhere, can you see him

The still waters of the billabong and the river allows for great reflection shots.

Not sure what they are but they could be magpie geese

Finally some sunset pictures

I think that will do for the moment.  Today we visited an impressive rock art site.  Hopefully, I find the time to post some the pictures we took there tomorrow after we get settled in at Katherine.