Katherine

Friday, December 4, 2009

So the plan was to wake up before sunrise and head off somewhere else in Litchfield, maybe film the sunrise and hopefully get something done whilst the day was still just hot. Naturally we woke up late and missed that opportunity, so we messed about with the camera for a while and enjoyed breakfast before heading off to find the next location, we turned off at one location but it lead to an unsealed road so we turned back, the next turning was the same, and so was the next, eventually we had driven about 100km and been nowhere, we figured seeing as we were heading towards Katherine we may as well just head there, so there we did head.

Katherine Gorge was awe inspiring, huge, beautiful and with a bloody great view at the top! Naturally in the heat I struggled just to reach the building next to the car park, we had a quick meal of a pie or something and then off we went, swimming. According to Kate the river did have crocodiles in but we should be fine as long as we stayed near the other people etc. only problem was we wanted to film… as it turned out the people nearby came in handy for that, an English girl filmed us while we splashed around and I pretended to be attacked by a croc. Funnily enough it was kind of like method acting, I wasn’t really sure if Kate was simply doing the typical Aussie thing and trying to scare the Pom (English person), or if there really were crocodiles in the river, so whilst I was splashing about and disappearing under water I was also imagining vividly what would happen if there were crocs and one was biting my leg.

After this we climbed up to the top just to punish ourselves a little more, and checked out the view, which I mentioned before, Gorgeous. After that I noticed there were two ways back and remembered seeing another that went along the top of the gorge rather than back down all those stairs, I said we should take that, thinking we had done the worst and it couldn’t be any harder than the climb up. I spent much of the walk back apologising, it took at least an hour maybe 2 and seemed to be going in the opposite direction to the car most of the way which was thoroughly disheartening. This meant it was almost sunset by the time we reached Katherine town to grab some food, (sandwich stuff which I promised to put together on the way) before we headed off to Kakadu. There is a rule in Australia: unless you are a huge bus and cannot be hurt by large objects do not drive at night, you will hit a kangaroo, or perhaps several, and they will damage your car, and probably you as well. This is not something to scare the Pom’s I was on a bus over night, we hit 5. I know people who rented a car and drove at night, they were unfortunate. So we stayed in Katherine that night, much to my dismay, however we were lent a mattress by an ex Pommy who was feeling generous and that meant at least it was partly comfortable if still stupendously sauna like.

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