6 - Australia

Out for breakfast this morning - just a little ways out of town - a neat little "food truck" type venue that came with high ratings online.    I was surprised when Duane agreed to go since it's not his normal style.   Nice food, coffee and tea.  The early morning temperatures are actually quite chilly - so sitting outside was actually very pleasant.

On the schedule today is a visit to Nitmiluk National Park - also known as Katherine Gorge.  I had very high hopes that we would do a full day of hiking here.  It's a series of 9 gorges on the Katherine River - each little body of water separated by a little land mass.

We ended up just seeing 2 of the gorges - 4 1/2 hours of torture!!  Hot!  It was forecast to be 98 degrees and I'm sure it was at LEAST that!


Here's our track from the Garmin watch.  Look at those calories!  I don't know if it's right or not, but I think I'll eat a big dinner tonight!

A side note - we've seen these signs several times - I think lots of Americans would be disappointed.  They don't appear to appreciate pets in any park we've been to!

The trail started off dry and dusty.

Duane leading the way.  At this point the trail is pretty easy to follow.  We're both carrying 2 liters of water in our packs and some snacks.  There are also water tanks at strategic points on the trails. (It's warm water, yuck)

View at the top - pretty nice!

I just had to add this photo - sorry it's a bit blurry - but I did almost capture a male red-tailed black cockatoo in flight.  It really is spectacular.

Some of the trail was really just climbing up a hill with a bunch of rocks!   Twisting an ankle up there would be bad, bad news!

Here's the view in the other direction.  Just dry, dry and hot!

Beautiful views from the top of the cliffs though.

At this point in the hike, I'm really not feeling too well.  I've drank about 3 liters of water....(I filled up my 2 liter bag at one of the water tanks).  Duane is doing fine, but I'm a bit light-headed and almost nauseous.  Luckily, we only had about a mile left and it was mostly downhill back to the car-park.

We noticed a huge number of bats hanging from 10 or so trees.  Quite the racket they made!

I caught one mid-flight.

I think I was on the verge of heat-stroke by the time we made it back to the cool a/c of the Welcome Center.   Seriously!  I plopped down on a bench and just rested for about 5 minutes before I moved.

But, I quickly recovered!  By the time we arrived back at our motel room, I was feeling much better.   A nice long cool shower did the trick and my face returned to normal.

Interesting tidbit - we had put 50 SPF sunscreen on all our exposed skin  - I noticed my shoulders and upper arms ( that were covered by the green shirt) were sunburned!!!  The areas that had sun screen were fine....but the areas that just our shirts covered were sun-burned.   I guess our shirts had close to 0 SPF!