Monday 6th April

In the morning we found that we had some unwelcome visitors to our van and Abbeys suitcase – ants!  They had come in by their dozens and even laid eggs in Abbeys bag.  We spent some time trying to get rid of them but we knew that we needed to get some strong stuff to get rid of them all – they had come in through the vents and we not keen on leaving again. We packed up camp at Mataranka and headed towards Katherine.  Katherine was only about 2 hours up the highway and after a visit to the information office we found a very nice campsite – slightly expensive but it had a great pool.  We headed off to the shops and and the McKeon’s spent the afternoon in the pool.  The best thing about today is we bought a fan which we could all enjoy outside and Mick and Veronica could have in their tent.

07/04/2015 Tuesday.

We headed up to Nitmuluk National Park (Katherine George).  It was a 30km drive from the campsite and we had been recommended to take the ferry up to the waterhole and then go on a cruise.  Once the tickets were sorted we headed straight to the ferry which would take up through the first gorge, once there we had a little rocky walk to the southern Waterhole.  This waterhole is only here for about 2 months of the year, then it dries up and goes stagnant.  It was beautiful, it was cool and had a wonderful waterfall.  We had about 2 hours here, swimming, eating lunch and generally relaxing round the waterhole.  Abbey found that if you sat on the ledge under the waterfall and looked out then you could see a rainbow. After lunch we headed down to to the pick up point and got on the cruise which would take up up through the rest of gorge 1 and into gorge 2.  Currently these are the only gorges which are open, as they had a late rainfall and the others were closed.  We couldn’t swim in the gorge as there might have been crocodiles in the river.  The river was too high to stop them coming up stream.  The freshwater crocodiles (freshie) are ok as they can only eat things smaller than themselves and are not interested in humans but the salt water crocodiles (saltie) are the ones to be afraid of.  Our guide on the boat was from the Jawoyn tribe which is the local tribe from round this area and he was very informative about the gorge.  On the return trip down to gorge 1 we spotted a freshie but as soon as he saw us we slid back in the water and hid from us.  We all had a great day and were all very tired when we got back to camp.

08/04/2015 Wednesday

Before we left the campsite this morning we decided to give the van a spring clean.  the McKeon’s did a great job of cleaning the outside of the van and were even offered jobs on other vans!!! We did the inside.  the van looks beautiful now – not sure how long it will last!!!  We carried on up the Stuart Highway to another part of the Nitmuluk National Park to Edith Falls.  We had been told how beautiful it was and so decided to take a look ourselves.  We parked up and looked at the map.  The lower pool which was only 150m away from the car park was closed so we had to climb up 1.4km to the upper pool.  It was extremely hot and we had to keep stopping for water breaks.  Finally we got there and it was well worth the climb.  It was a large waterhole and had a large waterfall.  You had to be very careful as the rock jutted out all over the place so you had to swim slowly just taking care.  There was even a little waterfall which you could glide down on, and we all had fun doing that.  The walk down was not good, it said it was 1.6km but it was not.  Veronica who had been suffering with a cold for the last couple of days found it extremely hard.  We had gone off ahead as we had set off an pest control bomb before we walked to the falls to try to get rid of the ants so were back at the van first and met the McKeon’s with cold drinks and ice creams to try and revive them better.

We had decided not to stay at Edith falls but to carry on the highway to Douglas Hot Springs.  It had said on Wiki camps that it was only 92km away from where we were, but looking at the map in closer detail we found it was over a 2 hour journey to get there as you had to go about 50km past it just to come back on yourself as the only road leading to it went that way!!!  We finally got there about 6pmish and found a lovely big site with many spaces only a couple of hundred metres away from the river and hot springs.  Before dinner we headed down to the river to discover the hot springs – basically the river turns hot in places – very hot in some places and you can even see where it is bubbling out from the ground.