triplog

We camped at Daly Waters pub last night - its about 275kms south of Katherine. Jane and I got here late in the evening (again), we stopped off at the Katherine swimming pool for Jane to swim some laps and I went for a skate at what was a pretty well built skate bowl (but full of rubbish and leaf litter).

Daly Waters is a bit of an Aussie pub institution - established by the Pearce family in the 1920s as a rest stop for travellers on the north/south route, it experienced a boom in the 1930s when it actually became an international airport - it was used as a refuelling depot for international flights heading for the east coast via Singapore. During WWII it became an Allied airbase and was used as a staging post for American bombers. Post-WWII it entered a bit of a decline before re-emerging on the tourist and truckie routes as a nice rest spot - having cold beer on tap can’t hurt either. The current pub was built in 1930 and is now heritage listed.

The photo above shows a flock of rainbow lorikeets having a shower in the spray from the sprinkler - they were hilarious, all screeching when the sprinkler passed over them, then flying off into the trees to shake themselves off, before coming back for another round.

Here’s a couple of shots from our canoeing trip up Katherine Gorge… yet another instance where the canoe has been pure gold. We went up to section 4 of 11 - it’s divided into sections separated by portages.

We spent yesterday canoeing Katherine Gorge in Nitmiluk NP (about 30kms outside the town of Katherine itself) - as with all these gorges, pretty magical.

Gotta say this about NT national parks, the facilities are pretty damn good - hot water showers, camp kitchens, drinking water, flushing toilets, the works… and no entry fees or passes, just (reasonable) camping fees. Compared to most east coast national parks, where they charge you a fortune and barely provide a longdrop loo. Not saying that we need all the facilities (and often it’s good to be as self-sufficient as possible), but it’s an interesting comparison - says a lot about how important tourism is in areas like Kakadu.

Today we’re resupplying in Katherine town (pretty depressing place, we were here the other day and the streets seemed to get pretty rough after dark - lot of drunken arguments and shouting going on)… anyways, after this we’re on the road across the gulf, heading for (official) cane toad territory (Queensland).

This morning we did a dawn boat tour through the Yellow Water wetland in Kakadu NP - an absolutely magical place. More photos to come when we get around to editing/sorting/uploading them

The cane toad - when we were heading through the Kimberley and the top end of WA, there seemed to be a lot of concern about the impending cane toad invasion. Now that we’re in the NT, you can see how unstoppable they are - whereas the parks in the west of the Northern Territory such as Keep River National Park had traps in place to try and stem the flow, here in Kakadu it’s too late - the toad is well and truly here.