After Kakadu we headed back to Katherine, where we set up our caravan on the block of some lovely friends of ours. What with the two gorgeous dogs, pom-pom making and big screen TV, the girls just didn't want to go anywhere. Andrew and I actually went to Edith Falls (Leliyn) without them - which felt rather strange but peaceful, and we all spent a day visiting Katherine Gorge (Aboriginal name Nitmiluk - after the sound of the cicadas) but apart from that we really didn't go out much for four days. We learned "from the horse's mouth" about the flood of 1998 where the river rose over 20m, roads were washed away and 5000 people were evacuated. What an amazing experience. Every wet season the river rises to 18m under the railway bridge and all the creeks fill up, which is so hard for us to visualise, who are used to so little rain in Adelaide. It was still unseasonably hot in Katherine, and it even rained one night - pelting down just after sunset when the girls were out with Andrew at the pontoon on the dam and had to shelter there until it eased up enough for them to make a dash for the house.
We really struggled to get going from there - in the end leaving so later we had to stop before our scheduled destination - at one of those roadside "free camps" that look great in the Camps 5 book but are actually awful: wall-to-wall caravans and motorhomes and a horrible pit toilet. I'm still having nightmares about it. It was just before Victoria River - where there is a very impressive (new) bridge, which has finally been built because the old one used to be under water for months every year! Apparently even the new one is under water for a few weeks every wet season. We did two really great walks around Victoria River the next morning: an escarpment walk that gave great views and a really good understanding of how water has shaped the landscape (as well as the Aboriginal dreaming story about the creation of the valleys and river) and another walk along the base of an escarpment - among these prehistoric trees called Livistona Victoria, which are nearly 100m tall and look like cabbage palms. The scenery looked like something from Jurassic Park.
Then we went on to Timber Creek, where we booked into a beautiful caravan park - all grass and trees and bougainvillea with a creek along the back that supposedly had a freshwater crocodile in it, but we never saw any sign of it. Somehow we couldn't make ourselves rush off after one night, but stayed a second night - spending the day checking out potential fishing spots (not great) and other local sights. It was a bit of a luxury, really, because now we have to make up a night between Kununurra and Broome, which will be hard to do - but you make these choices at the time, don't you, and then you just have to live with them. I think we were still feeling too relaxed after our stay in Katherine, and not ready for too much rushing around. And that caravan park at Timber Creek was quite special. Definitely the nicest we've stayed in so far, in terms of surroundings.
Leaving Timber Creek we didn't have to hurry too much, knowing that we would put our clocks back 1.5 hours when we crossed the border into WA. It was a long, boring run of about 300km with no stops along the way until we hit the quarantine checkpoint just before Kununurra. Given my job, I was particularly paranoid about making sure we didn't have any "illegal" products with us - even giving up the girls' carefully collected seed samples from Mataranka! I also made Andrew clean all the road dirt off the caravan, after the stories I'd heard about harvesters trying to get over the border - but they barely even checked!
Over the border, cut speed down from 130km to 110km (ha ha only joking - we do 90km tops with the caravan) and next thing we were in Kununurra - our first stop in Western Australia.
Captions for pictures
- Lynne and the girls with Dexter and Frankie - instant best friends
- Impromptu flute concert for our hosts
- Wlldflowers along the walk above Edith Falls
- Swimming hole at base of Edith Falls
- First gorge at Nitmiluk. Closed for swimming because a tourist reported seeing a crocodile!
- We think this is a male bower bird. Can anyone confirm?
- View of Victoria River valley from escarpment walk
- "Jurassic Park" walk
- Morning cuddles in the caravan!
- Timber Creek caravan park - all that grass and space - amazing!
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