The rest of the photos

Kunnunurra 23rd July Bush(wo)man Berry

Kunnunurra, WA 23rd July.

First night out of Katherine, we camped at Flora River Nature Park for a couple of nights. We did the short walks to some very beautiful water falls. We put the canoe in and after portaging around some rapids, fished, or at least Ric fished while I held us in place hugging an overhanging branch and kept an eye out for crocodiles. We ended up with a couple of feeds of sooties. No luck with the 5 barra  we caught as they didn't meet the 55cm size limit. From there we did a one night stopover at Victoria River Roadhouse on our way to Gregory National Park. We checked out Jasper Gorge as a camp spot - didn't think much of that so headed across a 4WD track (took us an hour to go 20 kms) to Limestone Gorge to find it closed due to road washouts from the floods. Ended up camping at nearby Bullita for 2 nights, and walked into Limestone Gorge. Spectacular scenery but quite different from what we had seen to that point. The last two nights we spent at Keep River NP. No water, but beautiful sunsets over Bungle Bungle type landscape.We have met some lovely people along the way. We spent this afternoon with a couple I taught with 20 years ago. They have been over some of the terrotory we are heading to, so we got the good oil on that.
Along the way we have been developing a range of skills, such as 4wdriving (photo), wood gathering (photo), and cooking scones in the camp oven (photo), as well as taking in some amazing scenery (photos of Katleen Falls at Flora River, and the Victoria River.)
From here we head off along the Gibb River Road to Broome with a number of excursions north to take in some spots that have been recommended to us.
We thought we were taking thing easy and just ambling along, especially on the bitumen, but we came across a couple doing it differently this morning. Photo.

Day 23 Katherine NT for the 2nd time.

We are not liking this being on the bitumen among the crowds. We are looking forward to heading further west today away from it all - we hope.

We have been staying in free camps wherever we can. Of course in some of the more remote places, there is no other choice. Some free camps have no amenities, some have  pit toilets and some have toilets & cold showers. Hence, we try to camp by waterholes where we can swim in lieu of a shower. The photo of Ric swimming  was taken at Butterfly Springs - one such camp, south of Roper Bay. Of course, there are some places where we skip a swim as the local crocodile population might take offense - as in Towns River in the next photo. 

Coming out of Butterfly Springs we had a hilarious twenty minutes following a young colt that had a liking for the road. It refused to head off to the scrub and started trotting off in front of us looking back repeatedly over each shoulder. As we sped up it broke into a gallop but kept to the middle. We tried backing off, stopping, running up behind and honking, all to no avail. When we thought the poor animal could do no better than to drop dead from a heart attack it slowed a little and as we edged up beside it finally made a dash for the bush and we were able to get up a bit of speed.

We spent a couple of nights in Elsey NP near Mataranka, canoeing the Roper River and walking the tracks through the park.

We tried to buy a replacement solar panel in Katherine, without success. So we made a quick trip to Darwin to buy a unit there, and visitied Litchfield NP on the way back to Katherine. We stayed overnight at Florence Falls and did quite a few of the walks in the park. The photo is of the Cascades in the park.

Last night we camped at Manbuloo Station just west of Katherine. This morning we came back into K to buy some things to make up a substitute number plate for the one we left in one of our river crossings along the alternate Savannah Way.

Day 16 NT

We are now in the Northern Territory - half an hour behind Queensland. After spending a few days at Lawn Hill, we spent a few nights at Kingfisher Camp by the Nicholson River - walking and canoeing. We spent last night at King Ash Bay outside Borroloola on the Robinson River. This is serious sport fishing territory. There is a city of caravans and campers here. People come from all over the country to stay for a few months fishing the gulf.  A pretty spot, but very crowded. So we are moving on today along the Roper Highway to 'who knows where".

Leonie - it is good to know that the Chestnut Court neighbourhood has raised the standard of residents.

Lawn Hill

We are now at Lawn Hill Gorge until the 5^th July – enjoying the walks, the swimming and the canoeing. On the way here we made a stopover at Gregory Downs for one night, or so we thought. We had broken camp after staying overnight, had driven out onto the road, when Ric thought to check our booking for Lawn Hill – the only booking we have made for the whole trip, mind you. We were 1 day early, so back to a better camp site on the river bank, put the canoe in upstream of the rapids and caught ourselves a couple of feeds of sooty grunter – see the photo, one of which we enjoyed by a camp fire 5 metres from the babbling rapids of the river – doesn’t get much better than that.

Woolie – I will be working on my tan, bit I think I’ll need more than 18 weeks to match yours.

John & Lea – rosella jam on toast for breakfast is a real treat  and  have been talking to a couple of truckies to get some practice – thankyou for that.