Day 11: Katherine Gorge

The next morning we went to the Doctors right away and scheduled an appointment for 11am. We had three hours to kill before that. We picked up some stuff from the pharmacy, tried to check out the local hot springs but to our dismay they were closed for renovation, and then we killed some time at the McDonalds because they had some free wifi. We saw this one oldish man just posted up there. We then went to the doctor where tehy cleaned out the wound and gave me a prescription for antibiotics. It was so much cheaper than the ER

After that ordeal we made ourselves a quick lunch in a park and headed to the main side of Nitmiluk National Park. Because it was the wet season there, the only things you could do there were hike, go on a boat cruise, and see the visitor center. Since I couldn’t really walk, I coughed up $90 to do a two hour river cruise. Sarah didn’t want to do that so she just went on a hike. We would have liked to do an all day canoe trip through the river and it’s gorges but we couldn’t because of the wet season. So after seeing a pretty cool museum display in the visitors center about the region, I got on the boat for a cruise at 2.

The cruise takes you through the first of 3 of I believe 17 gorges. By both sides you are surrounded by cliff faces 70 meters tall. After we reached the first gorge, we had to get off the boat and onto another one about 500 meters down the river, because of rapids. In regards to wildlife, we saw a bunch of bats and even a freshwater crocodile. All in all, it was a pretty good excursion with some beautiful views, but not worth $90. Apparently, Sarah’s hike was a little disappointing because it was too easy for her and much of the vegetation was burnt from a recent fire. We came back to Katherine and we were both craving ice cream. However, there are no ice cream places in the town so we had to go to McDonalds and get McFlurries. They have Cadbury crème flavor ones here and they are the bomb. Much to our surprise, the man that was posted up that morning was still there. I had so many questions that were left unanswered. The rest of the night was pretty regular: we grabbed Chinese, made conversation with a pair of german backpackers, and read until bed. That night however, we rolled down a window but covered it with a breathable shirt/ That way, we ere still able to get a breeze but didn’t have to worry about mosquitos.


Katherine | Kakadu