Ania & Marcin visited Katherine Gorge 14 years ago on an overnight kayak trip when Ania was posted to the Berrimah Veterinary Lab in Darwin for 6 weeks during her PhD. It was great to be able to visit it again this time with the kids. While Sebastian with dad did a half day trip up to the 3rd gorge on the kayaks Ania and Patrick did a boat cruise. Once again the location and activity did not disappoint. To date it ranks as #1 day and activity for both Seb and dad. It was a very hot day so we did the early morning session with an 8am start. This helped to take some of the edge off and only meant 39C deg kayaking for the end part of the adventure. Kayaking up the gorges, transporting the kayak across dry rocks dividing the gorges, swimming in the beautiful river (fresh crocs only at this time of year in the higher gorges) was simply stunning. It was hard work but tonnes of fun. We do have a very special connection with this place and all feel at ease and right at home here. We all want to be back here another time and perhaps do the overnight trip as a family. The night before we also visited Katherine Hot Springs which were pretty warm, just after the typical mid-afternoon pre-wet season thunderstorm, so it was a really quick dip.

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While in the area we did not stay in Katherine itself but in Manbulloo Homestead about 12 km to the west. It’s a historical cattle station which now focuses mainly on tourism. They still have about 100+ head of cattle (very small by comparison to the big stations), some buffalo and a few resident horses. The main focus of the Station now seems to be mango farming (the famous Manbulloo mangos.) The main attractions for the kids is the ability to feed all the animals. Patrick especially took a liking to the horse Percy which he fed each day. We were amazed to observe the change in the kids and how quickly they became comfortable being close to them… an excellent experience for them

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Riding at the back of the ute to feed the cattle was another super highlight especially given we were the only ones doing so. Being off-season there were only a few other caravans here. We were told that UN in the season – 2 months earlier – they were so full they had to use paddocks to accomodate the numbers and still despite that they were turning away up to 60 caravans a day. Wow… we are so happy we are here so late in the season and are happy to put up with extreme heat just to enjoy it more. It’s the story that keeps repeating itself each place we visit.

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Manbulloo also provides accomodation for seasonal fruit picker workers. There is a large contingent of Samoans who work at the mango plantations in the area. Outside of enjoying awesome, big juicy mangoes, we were also treated to a traditional show performance by the Samoans on Saturday night. Very good fun.

We stayed in Manbullo for 3 nights and then headed towards WA. On the way we stopped in Timber Creek. Very small town, we left the caravan hooked onto the car in the caravan park, had a quick swim in the pool and at dusk we were called by some other tourists who said to come to the creek as some locals were feeding crocs with leftover meat pies from the bakery. It was a fun experience with both Seb and Patrick participating; we are learning more and more about crocs and now started to see firsthand that freshies are placid and cool, and relatively harmless to humans unlike their mean-looking salty cousins…

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Another thing worth mentioning again is the bats – there seems no escaping them in this part of the world at this time of the year. Huge colonies at Timber Creek with an overwhelming smell that Ania can’t wait to escape from haha (Ania – editorial comment.)