Katherine to Darwin

You would think after years of travel and blessed adventures I would learn that the brochure never precisely describes the destination that it is seeking to advertise. It so happens that the Monday prior to my getting to Katherine the ABC had done a segment on Katherine. It looked like a shiny eutopia with First nations and white inhabitants all worked in harmony. While Katherine has its advantages there is the atmosphere that is common to Fitzroy Creek, Halls Creek and Kumala and it is a town tinged with the red of the dusty plains surrounding it.

I was so fortunate that the first place to stay near Katherine with phone range was a cattle station that had turned part of the property into a van park. It was a beautiful base to stay with Katherine lying only 10 Ks away, surrounded by trees, birds and lots of red dirt. The morning chorus of the birds is divine to wake to and the red dirt impossible to keep out of the caravan.

The first task in Katherine was getting the left break looked at on the caravan. It had started up with a woeful moan and caused heads to turn as I made my way to my caravan site. I met a delightful Katherine local who actually came out the park to work on it and all was put right in amazingly short order.

Bingley and I walked the width and breadth of Katherine over the next couple of days. The nights in Katherine were freezing and that rekindled my notions of getting a diesel heater for the caravan. I learned about these heaters in a free camping spot when I was recounting to a couple (from Victoria) a miserable cold night that I had near Geraldton, and I felt that free camping in the cold was a lost cause, and they gave me the glorious revelation of diesel heaters to manage the cold when not on electricity. I was ecstatic and on my wanders through Katherine – which happens to have a plethora of hunting, camping, fishing etc shops I thought I would try and purchase one. Well did they think that I was a strange one! Apparently, it is far too hot up here for them to think of stocking such a thing! In one of the places, I did let them know that their nights were bloody cold and they curtly informed me that it was only for 3 months of the year! It was only later that I thought I should have told them how absurd their stance was as I might be travelling to Alice Springs where the nights there were -2 degrees!

The taphophile need was satisfied by a tour of the cemetery. I got some feel for the issues in Katherine for it is here for the very first time I saw headstones with a name and just ‘’found’ on a certain date, or alternatively ‘buried’ on a certain date. It was so sad. No one noted a date of birth, no one noted the lost. The inscriptions were so perfunctory, so bureaucratic – I could have wept for the lost souls.

I then booked a tour on the to explore the gorge! That is such a banal sentence for a sheer spiritual presence of landscape. A landscape that you enter into, it envelopes you and it will take over your soul if you let it! It was extraordinary. I had never thought about it before but the sandstone of the gorge is 1000 billion years old and was laid down before bony entities were a thing so there are no fossils in it! It is a panoply of stones mixed with some rain forest that is fed by a swamp up the top and feeds the plants through the cracks in the stone. The water of the gorge is clear and clean and fresh. I learned the pandanis palm is native and the leaves can be split and twisted for basket weaving and that the bark of the paper barks lining the water way are a marvellous substitute for foil if you want to cook a fish and that fresh water crocodiles don’t have the teeth or the mouth width to eat a human being, but salt water crocodiles sometimes come into the gorge and they are removed when spotted. I also learned that Crocodiles have specific maternity wards that actually stand out like sore thumbs on the shore of the gorge. These bare sandy areas are where they lay their eggs and the birds seek out an easy feed on newly hatched crocs or feed on the eggs, but enough survive to keep things ticking along. I saw stone art that is thought to be approx. 1000 years old! Apparently, the sandstone absorbs the blood and ochre that they had used for the artwork and is inculcated into the stone – a bit like a tattoo and had run a bit but hasn’t faded.

The sandstone of Katherine gorge marks the beginning of the Arnhem Land plateau and gave me a sense of the history of the world I was privileged to step into. The Katherine Gorge is in the Nitmiluk National Park and is located on Jawoyn peoples’ land. Apparently Nitmi – means cicada and luk means land, so it gives you an indication of the hum that accompanied us down the gorge and savoured the magnificent tableau. I have already ventured into Arnhem Land ever so briefly by visiting Humpty Doo! I ask you who on earth could drive past a signpost with that name on it. Unfortunately, it did not live up to its eccentric name for there is just a boringly conventional shopping centre there – but nevertheless it is in Arnhem land – a further exploration is further in my future.

I left Katherine after a week – while there I had a conversation my brother Don who is actually making his way to Katherine for the 150th anniversary of the completion of the Overland Telegraph which is to be celebrated on August 22, 2022. So, I thought it would be stupid not to join him, being a fellow history buff, so up to Darwin I pointed the car which is only 260ks from Katherine. Again, I was amazed that yet there was another landscape. I had expected a tropical landscape, but it was full of lethargic eucalypts with very small tree ferns underneath thriving and glowing in the subtle light caste by the eucalypts and the ubiquitous termite mounds. I am making my way through a very slim tome on termites as I have become fascinated by these little critters. I have learned that the different shapes mean different species, I have learnt that there is only one species that eat your house, the M. darwiniensis, and that they are not ants (as in white ants) at all but part of the cockroach family! I learnt they are experts at keeping their towers cool and have developed cooling systems that are now being adopted in some buildings to cut down carbon foot prints, I also learnt that those that don’t feast on trees and houses grow their own fungus as a food source and they recognise their fellow colonies by sniffing pheromones. Yesterday I learnt how to cook the critters which didn’t thrill me at all. Currently we are in a little place about 1 hour out of Darwin called Adelaide River doing day trips to the Litchfield National Park, Darwin and little places in Arnhem Land. We are here for another week and then back down to Katherine for the celebrations.