Today we had a cruise through two of the 13 gorges in Nitmiluk scheduled, basically we had hoped to do the first 3 but as this is the end of the dry season there isn’t enough water to go through the third gorge so we had to make do with two. We drove to Nitmiluk National Park which is where the cruise departs and walked from the visitor information centre to the boat launch, we had been warned that we would be with a ‘large group’ of Germans but as it turned out it wasn’t too bad, although they did live up to the stereotype by trying to get on the boat first then reserving seats for their friends but they didn’t realise how well practiced Chris and I are at sitting where we want to! As the boat sets off it almost doesn’t feel like a gorge as it is very wide and open but towards the end of the first one it the sides start to rise up a bit. We had to walk 500m to the second gorge as the water hasn’t covered the rocks yet, but this gave us the opportunity to stretch our legs and also look at some rock art, although this is nowhere near as impressive as the ones in Kakadu National Park, the second gorge is far more impressive and you defiantly get the view of how the rock split and the water got in to create both the gorge and the river below, apparently during the wet season the water rises 3 metres and it has risen as much as 9, even the little bit of rain that we have had over the last few days has made a difference, apparently last week they couldn’t get the boat across one of the rocky bits, and you can see the walkway where they had to get people off to transfer them to another boat, but today although we had to go slowly we made it over successfully. The second gorge was probably my favourite but it ends in a large rock wall which it is hard to believe is ever submerged but apparently it is, the guide explained that at the start of the rainy season they basically let out all the mooring lines and as the water level rises so do the boats, he added that they haven’t lost any yet but he wouldn’t be surprised if they did one year as the forecasts are not great! Unfortunately as with all these things all too soon it was time to turn round and head back, we didn’t see much wildlife on the banks but we did see a few crocodile traps, as in Kakadu they have both fresh and salt water crocodiles but they try to trap the saltwater ones as they can be dangerous to do this they either lay traps or put bright red buoys in the water and apparently the crocodiles are very inquisitive so will come to see what they are and bite into them which lets the rangers know they are in the area. We got back to the visitor centre and had an ice cream as it is already really hot, the forecast today is for it to hit 39C but hopefully that is wrong! We drove back to town and went to the visitor information centre as we needed to check the opening hours of a few of the places we want to visit, unfortunately Katherine is closed, if we had arrived a bit earlier we could have gone to the Murray homestead or more importantly the School of the Air which is the largest classroom in the world – obviously defined by area rather than pupils, basically it is what used to be the telegraph school where children were taught over short wave radio, nowadays they use the internet and children learn more in a ‘classroom’ setting than ‘home school’ which is how it used to work where the teacher was only available if they had a question. As this wasn’t open we decided to go for a walk so we set off for the riverbank intending to walk down one side and back up the other, but…. in this heat it was really hard so we crossed the road bridge then walked back across the old railway bridge which is 19 meters above the current river level but in the past the water level has reached this which is so hard to imagine! We had trouble imagining 30% of Kakadu being under water but seeing a 18m rise in water must be phenomenal! We both decided that it would probably be really good to be here in the wet season but it also would be really difficult to get to as the roads would be flooded so perhaps not! We walked across the railway bridge – Chris was very brave considering it was a long way up and you could see through it all the way! Then walked up to the old steam engine they have, there are a couple of trees by the steam engine that were completely full of bats or flying foxes as they call them out here, we stood watching them for some time then decided to cut the walk short as it is really hot and set off back to the hotel, after booking a table for dinner we decided to go for a swim then it was just time to update the website and have a drink then have a shower and head out for dinner.
