Katherine (9-12th Nov)

And so the Northern Territory stole my heart. After the bareness of WA, it was so alive! Trees, and so much water. We drove towards the rain. The smell of dust; of musty, wet, eucalyptus. So fresh. Petrichor. That beautiful smell of dust after rain.
And when the rain caught us, it was so sudden, so hard. A down pour would last less than a minute, drop the temperature by more than 12'C and all trace would vanish almost instantly in the heat.

The rivers, so huge and full, and, after so much desert and heat: utterly amazing!- lined with their bottle-shaped trees, so shaped I imagine to store water. Rivers, running through gorges and canyons as we crossed the Kimberly's!


And we arrived in Katherine, to a campsite with a pool, and a river, on the banks of which I will always kid myself that there were crocodile tracks. Either way it was beautiful.

It was still incredibly hot though, but less suffocating than in WA.
Hadn't quite hit the rainy season but the storms were coming and I guess clearing the air as they came.
Even so, a lot of time was spent in the pool, even through the rain and the storms and the lightning, well not so much the lightning when the storm broke overhead. It was quite fantastic to be back at a campsite, especially as Katherine is inland, so no sea to cool off in. The pool was heaven! And so lovely in the rain. Warm from the sunlight, pelted with cold rain. So much rain... and so many bats. So many hundreds and thousands of them flying over the tent every evening. The first time I'd seen a colony of bats. Like a flock of birds going to roost!

Being on the riverside was great, perfect for chilling out, and in Casey's case, fishing. Being at a campsite, not just stuck with someone who can't stand fish, he also had people to share his catch with. His catch in this case being a huge Barramundi... cooked up 'nicely' and consumed with many a bottle of wine.

Company at the little tenting section at the back of the campsite were many European travelers and workers, and an Aussie family who seemed to spend their life on the road. Fun Times!

The days spent around Katherine were incredible too- Katherine Gorge and Edith Falls!

Katherine Gorge was amazing. A long, hot walk to the top, and then the view- the view was just spectacular. So impossible to convey the sheer scale of it. Pictures just really can't capture it. If I ever return I want to kayak up the gorge. The height of the cliffs is just incredible.
Thank you tourist boat that got into my pictures. It does do something of an attempt at giving some idea of the sheer scale... and then the long walk back down to the river.
This is about where I should note that there were crocodile warnings along the river, and crocodile cages. So I of course went for a nice, refreshing dip when we got back down. Unfortunately the gorge would have been a little far to swim. (It was a safe place to swim- croc restriction measures).

Now Edith Falls was beautiful. Not quite in the spectacular sense of the gorge, but as the true beauty of nature. It was a long, winding hike up. So hot, but the air was clearer, less humid after the storms. The walk goes up into the bush, giving glimpses of the river; occasional falls; Aboriginal stone pilings; then what I guess is the accumulation of the walk: the pools at the top of the falls. So serene and quiet in the heart of nature, away from everything and everyone. The most relaxing place to just stop and float. Breathtakingly beautiful in my opinion.
And the loop walk continues it's meandering way down the other side.