From Gorgeous Katherine Gorge to Laidback Darwin

Katherine Gorge

After the cattle station we were worried that everything else would be dull, but the Northern Territory is truly a state of natural wonders. We started with Katherine Gorge, taking a boat trip through three of the gorges that make up this stunning waterway. Ben remembers canoeing through here in 1997, looking for freshwater crocs, and we got to see some again this trip. The National Parks staff in NT have the unenviable job of clearing the big saltwater crocs out of the swimming holes and tourist areas at the beginning of each season. The summer here is wet season, and many of the roads here flood, so the ‘winter’ is tourist season (although it’s over 30 degrees every day), and during the wet the crocs are able to go quite far inland. We saw some of the cages they use to catch them and they give you a good idea how large they are!

A freshwater crocodile – avoids humans, thankfully!

Edith Falls.

From Katherine we headed up the road to Edith Falls, what a little beauty this place is. There is a large swimming hole (lake sized) with a waterfall and great for swimming, but for those happy to walk 40 mins up hill there is a smaller, quieter rockhole and waterfall to laze about it.  The boys absolutely loved it!

Refreshed it was on to Darwin, that has always been on my bucket list. It’s a small city with big ideas, lots of new investment has created a lovely waterfront and wharf where we met up with some friends of my family, Jan & Eric.  A dozen Oysters, prawns and bubbly wine completed a lovely evening.  Jan & Eric are part of the Grey Nomad phenomenon here (like the Snow Birds we met in the USA) retirees who follow the sun in the winter months in their caravans.  We’ve met so many  on the road here, and they are all so charming and full of brilliant advice on places to go and stay – they’ve literally done it all before.

But its not all food and wine, we also did some ‘history’ visiting the Darwin Museum to learn about Cyclone Tracy that devastated Darwin on Christmas Eve 1974, and to see some stimulating aboriginal art displays.  And a stuffed 5.1 metre saltwater crocodile caught locally nicknamed Sweetheart, that used to worry the local fisherman.  To satisfy Ollie’s live animal obsession we spent the day at the Territory Animal Park, where the boys had a close encounter with an albino carpet python, while I stayed safely on the other side of the glass. We also checked up on some Dingo’s orphans that Gary & Michelle had found on the cattle station and donated to the park, all doing well!

The artist with our painting.

Other highlights included the fantastic Mindil Markets on the beach, which has a real party atmosphere as everyone buys great street food and sits on the beach watching the sun go down over the water.   Fantastic street entertainers made it a great night out for the boys too while Ben and I shopped for a piece of genuine aboriginal art – a lovely present for our wedding anniversary.

We were also invited to have dinner with some lovely couples we met in Darwin. John & Dallas, with their friends Fiona & Gary, cooked us a fantastic lamb roast in their waterfront apartment, and we put the world to rights over a couple of glasses of wine. Sometimes you meet people that you instantly bond with and one of the great bonuses of travelling is that you get to make new friends. Thanks for your hospitality guys!

One of the must-sees here in the NT is Litchfield National Park, and like Edith Falls it has the most fantastic swimming holes, and we managed to do three in one day, each more beautiful than the next. I fear it has spoiled us for swimming pools forever!  We also thought we had seen plenty of impressive termite mounds on this trip, but the ones at Litchfield stand at an awesome 5 metres and take up to 50 years to build – not bad for a little ant.