Crocodiles!

Saturday 11 November

We both woke up this morning feeling lots better – still a bit fragile, but not so achy or sore and definitely not sick. Others in the party were still on the downward trend, and one, Norm, had to stay behind as we set off at 07.00 – after breakfast! – another light meal. Once on the coach Ruben distributed poppies to everyone to wear today, Remembrance Day.

Our first trip today took us about 25 kms up the road to Nitmuluk National Park – another area handed back to the Aborigines, but worked by the white people. This area covers about 300 acres and contains the thirteen Katherine Gorges – one of the main reasons people visit this area. The Katherine River has a huge watershed and even though the water level was low, there was still enough for us to take a cruise through the first two gorges. Imagine, by 07.30 we were sitting in a boat chugging up the river – the sun was pleasantly warm in the upper 20’s, but getting hotter with every minute. The river meanders through steep sided rocks, and the turns are all at 90 degrees – no gentle bends. There were a few sub-gorges, but on the whole, the rocky bank was an unbroken stretch of rock in each direction, around 50 ft tall. We saw a few birds – long beaked heron, ibis, kites and a wedge tailed eagle, and there were also lots of fish we could see in the river. Our boat trip was shared with a German tour group – I wonder if they understood the significance of our poppies – none of them seemed to speak any English (they had a translator with them on the boat), and they didn’t seem keen to communicate.

We sailed up the first gorge until the river was blocked by rocks with small waterfalls tinkling through (when the river is in flood, one boat can do the complete journey), then had to disembark and walk about half a mile over rocks, up steps, and along the river bank, to find another boat, which would take us up the second gorge. The deepest part of the river here – about 20 metres - is at one of the turns, which forms a natural eddy, and the local tribes believe that the Rainbow Serpent lives here at the bottom (a bit like the Loch Ness Monster). No one is allowed to swim or fish in these waters for fear of waking the serpent. Generally the water in the gorge was about 10 metres. We saw a couple of large caves high up in the rock wall, which were covered by the 1998 floods, when enough water flowed into this area to fill Sydney Harbour more than three times. (In Katherine the water at the bridge rose 20.4 metres, covering both the road bridge and the railway bridge.) There was another large flood earlier this year, but the flood waters weren’t quite so deep this time. At the end of the second gorge – another band of large rocks across the river, barred our entrance to the third gorge, so we turned round and retraced our … well, some steps and our boat course. At one point, on our way out in the first gorge, we got a bit too close to a protruding rock in the river, and the boat nearly grounded – there was a loud scraping and it wobbled from sided to side a bit – but on the way back, we gave this rock a wider berth.

After the boat trip we stopped for a brief interlude at the cultural centre – the coffee shop and souvenir shop were both bigger than the exhibition area, which just explained how the gorge was carved out by the river, through fault lines, after the tectonic plate movement, and only a little about the indigenous tribes of aborigines.

From here we drove back to retrieve Norm, who was on his feet by now . . . just. The town of Katherine developed following a gold rush in 1887 and in 1889 a railway line from Darwin opened, to allow easier access for the prospectors – many coming from China. It was intended to extend this line to Alice Springs, but it only got as far Yuendamu, a few hundred kilometres short, and the suppliers still had to use camels. The complete line from Adelaide to Darwin was only opened just over two years ago, and is known as the ‘Ghan’, in recognition of the Afghan camels that had traveled this route for over one hundred years. During the war, the area was evacuated and used as a troop base. Today the town has a population of around 3,000. As we drove through the town, we saw the sister “classroom” of the school in Alice Springs. The town seems quite spread out, and does not have the enigmatic atmosphere of Alice, or even Tennant Creek. Perhaps we didn’t get time to see enough of it to like it more.

We drove to Pines Creek, so named because one of the first people through here, Sidney Herbert, described the area in his diary as “a creek with lots of interesting pines”. Today it is a small settlement, where it seemed most people still live in tin huts – Ruben’s comment was that “people in this area do not spend a lot on their houses” – big understatement. We ate lunch at Maisey’s Café, the only place on offer apart from a BP garage. Funnily enough, outside of town there was a race course, with a golf course in the centre – when the horses are racing they not only have to avoid the termite hills, but also flying golf balls!

It was then time to make our way to Kakadu, and the Warradjan National Park. On the way we watched the first Australian film in colour, about an abducted aborigine girl, that was filmed in the Nitmuluk National Park where we were this morning. We arrived a little early so we were able to visit the Cultural Centre before we ventured on another cruise. This visitor centre was one of the better ones we have visited – it told us lots of information about how the local indigenous people live – their beliefs, traditions, and way of life – what they eat, utensils and tools they use, and explanations about their art.

It was then time to board another boat to take us out into the Yellow Waters Billabong and South Crocodile River to see the local wildlife. Everyone was hoping to see crocodiles and we weren’t disappointed. We saw several raise their heads from the river, no more than a few feet from the boat, but then they would dive away. And then we spied one nearer to the bank, and as the pilot edged the boat closer, it climbed out on the bank, opened its mouth and sunned itself – lying languidly along the riverside, with his yellow eyes open, watching to see we didn’t get too close. We also saw an array of birds, including sea eagles, two types of kingfishers, egrets, pelicans, magpie geese, several sorts of ducks, two bralgos (similar to emus) and two water finches, that walked on waterlily leaves, in the shallows near the river bank, with their long spindly legs and very long toes – each one about six inches! – which made them look as if they were walking on water. We spent two hours on this boat, and really we could have spent a whole day there – there was so much to see – Colin was in his element and really enjoyed himself.

All too soon we had to return to the dock – another set of tour people were waiting for their tour (we were already half an hour late back) – and we set off for our hotel, the Crocodile Hotel in Jabiru. On the way, dark clouds loomed overhead, and suddenly we were in the middle of a tremendous downpour, with Paul hardly able to see out of his windscreen. There were soon puddles at the sides of the road as rain was blown in sheets, horizontally through the trees by a gale force wind. Time to put our seat belts on! After about ten minutes the rain and winds ceased as quickly as they had started. We arrived at the hotel in sunshine – just. The rains had followed us and for the first half hour, it was reminiscent of an afternoon in Thailand.

From the air, this hotel looks like a crocodile, with Reception in the ‘head’, the restaurant in the ‘neck’, the rooms in the ‘body’ and the laundry in the tail. Our room looks out over a stream with small waterfalls running round a garden area in the ‘stomach’ area, next to the swimming pool, which is small, but looked very inviting – such a shame we didn’t have time to try it out before dinner. In fact, one of our bags was ‘missing’ when the luggage was delivered to our room, and Ruben (poor thing) had had to brave the storm to open the coach to find it.

Dinner was a buffet again – but the food was very good. I had shellfish and rare roast beef and Colin sampled several dishes, especially the desserts – which did look scrummy if you are a dessert person – and, of course, he is. We were quite surprised at just how many people are in the hotel – and not tour groups. The dining room was nearly full by the time we finished eating. Our room is very smart, with two double beds, and all the usual fittings. It has large patio windows on to the garden, and when I went out to explore soon after we first arrived, I met a small grey lizard, who stopped and stared at me with a quizzical look, before darting off into the undergrowth.

Most people are now on the mend, and we didn’t have any new casualties today, so hopefully the “virus” is over.

Tomorrow we reach Darwin, the final destination for this trip. It doesn’t seem possible that we will have been traveling by coach for over 4,000 kilometres. It has been really interesting and from what we have seen so far, we love Australia.