We found a bloke with a little blue egg beater near Katherine, NT. He said he could take us to see some indigenous rock art out beyond the 13 gorges along the Katherine river in the Nitmiluk National Park. As Jayne just loves getting around in small aircraft (not), off we went. 

At least they leave the doors on at this time of year. Once it gets too hot the doors come off!
The scale of this country still continues to amaze us.

Cruises run on the first 2 gorges & beyond that it’s hiking & kayaking as far and as fit as you can go.
Our pilot had air lifted a hiker with a twisted ankle back to base earlier in the day as he’d come to grief in one of the upper gorges.

Spot the “H” in the shot below

(It’s centre of photo just above RHS of dash). Anyway, he landed on the “H” (just a lucky shot) near a bunch of gorges & took us for a walk in the bush. Shame a bunch of 4000 year old graffiti artists had beaten us to it. This was a site that contained some of the best preserved rock art we have seen.

The next helicopter hop was to a remote pool for a swim. It was supposed to be an exclusive private affair for just the two of us but mid swim we were visited by a snake (there’s a recurring theme emerging here). 

Note the excessive head movements in the time lapse video below. We both kept spinning around to see if the snake was coming back for a second dip.

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Back in the eggbeater & heading back to base we flew the extent of the 13 gorges once again. Absolutely astounding!

Later that same day we did a river cruise to have a close up view of the gorges.

As we walked down to the wharf we were greeted by a large colony of big fat flying foxes. They were hanging upside down in the trees making a hell of a racket as per the clip below.

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The cruise traveled thru the first two gorges with a walk to see some rock art in between.

Some of this rock art is very high up. My theory on this is that 4000 odd years ago it may have been drawn from the top of a tree (that’s since gone). Similar to the extent some modern day graffiti artists will go to paint in what seems to be inaccessible places on highway overpasses.

Lots of stunning landscapes everywhere.

Along the edge of the gorges are occasional sandy beaches with little signs on them.  I tried to convince Jayne to swim over & see what they said but she wasn’t keen. The sign says “Crocodile Nesting Area – DO NOT ENTER”. These are the areas where crocs lay there eggs.

On the way back we enjoyed a sunset dinner while cruising thru the gorge. A lovely way to finish the day, gorging ourselves in the gorge.

03 Jul This entry was published on 03/07/2016 at 9:07 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.