Author: Mrs A
Location: Katherine, Northern Territory
Saturday: Leaving Bitter Springs, it was just over an hours’ drive up the highway to Katherine. We last visited here about 15 years ago when we hired a Landrover Troop Carrier in Darwin and explored the region.
We set up at the campground and headed to the shops in town to finally replenish our ailing fruit and vegetable supplies – we have not seen fresh food since Cairns and the Atherton Tablelands, so were down to the last scraps.
The scenery is gradually becoming a little lusher, with occasional patches of grass and tropical landscaping – a long way from the wet tropics of northern Queensland but a step improvement from the dusty dry standards of our recent travels.
We set up under the shade of some of the tallest trees we have seen in a month, demonstrating just how much more water falls in these parts.
Buoyed by our good experiences at Bitter Springs, we decided to check out Katherine Hot Springs. This little known natural feature was just 200 metres from our camp, so it seemed logical to have a look.
We looked at the flowing pools first, steps leading into a deep turquoise creek with quite a few people sitting in there enjoying the warm water. Lower down a large group of young men sat in the water with cans and bottles of beer, obviously enjoying a rather rowdy Saturday afternoon despite the strict ‘no glass or alcohol’ rules posted around. Unlike Bitter Springs, this is not National Park run, and seems not to be policed by anyone. Disappointed, we decided to give it a miss.
As we turned a corner we spotted a deep pool, the source where the warm water wells out of the ground. It was blissfully empty and quiet, so we jumped on in for a swim.
It was a small deep pool, but you could swim quite a bit due to the continuous strong current – a bit like a 33 degree centigrade swimming treadmill!
Sunday: Our morning started with visitors – Joadie and Derek, fellow Zoners, live and work at the airforce base in Katherine, so they popped over with coffees to say hello.
Before we knew it, three hours had passed, many stories and experiences shared and laughs had. Hopefully we will meet again on the road some day.
When we last visited Katherine we had hired canoes and paddled along the Katherine River through several of the gorges. We recalled the heavy, 18kg bathtub like boats that you have to drag over rocks to reach the next gorge. Our inflatable Packrafts were a much better option at around 3kg, so we called the tour company which ferries people to the start of the paddlable gorge to see whether we could bring our boats instead. It was immediately clear they didn’t want to forfeit their hire money, so we abandoned that idea and decided to do something completely different.
The Cutta Cutta Caves National Park is located about a half hour drive south of Katherine, and home to a set of limestone caves originally explored in the early 1900s. We decided to join a tour.
It’s always hard to look at caves and not compare them to the spectacular displays at the Jenolan Caves or Wombeyan Caves back in NSW. These were a long way from the splendour of those, but as we learned, are equally as old. Rain predominantly falls in these parts between December and March, meaning the chemical reactions which result in stalagmites and stalactites are infrequent and they are slow to grow.
The caves have also been poorly cared for – in the early 1900s they were used for wild parties, and during World War II soldiers used the stalactites for target practice. With this preamble Mr A and I wondered what on earth we were here to see!
Fortunately the caves were embraced within the Parks and Wildlife Commission in 1967, were cleaned up and walkways provided. Solar panels and banks of batteries supply all lighting in the caves. These are the only caves open to the public in tropical Australia.
They were named Cutta Cutta Caves in 1967 by the local Jawoyn people, meaning cave of many stars, named after the glittering limestone features. While it is admitted the local Jawoyn knew about the existence of the caves, they apparently did not enter them and our aboriginal guide told us there is no evidence they feature in any stories either.
As with all caves, much of the talk was about what people think the rocks features look like, with a profile of Elvis, a dragon, unicorn and kangaroo among the more interesting.
It was interesting to hear that the caves flood every wet season, and the water drains out through underground streams – ending up at the springs we swam in yesterday – funny how everything is linked!
The caves are home to a couple of endangered species of bat, mouse spiders (we didn’t see any but apparently they’re quite big!) and snakes among other critters. We spotted a Banded brown tree snake curled up along the wall as we explored.
We finished our stay in Katherine with a night out at the local Chinese restaurant. There are in fact three Chinese restaurants in Katherine, but Regent Court Chinese is the one to visit. Fortunately we booked, as it was very busy, and great food.
After all the heat and dust of the past few days, this was just what the doctor ordered. We swam up the warm river about 20 metres and were soon away from the crowds and had a lagoon all to ourselves. Just bliss. This has to be a stop over if you’re heading this way.
We did a short walk along the river before returning to Bitter Springs for a dip in the serenity.
Top tips for visiting Bitter Springs (Stay at Bitter Springs Caravan and Camping):
The flat dry landscape continued, broken only by the occasional herd of cattle ambling alongside the highway and flocks of black kites feeding on the night’s roadkill.
It has a lot of character, even if it is not a very authentic Australian outback bar. The staff are all backpackers, with wide reaching accents from Ireland to Slovakia and it has a good reputation for its food.
Just one small part of the 40km square area is open to visitors, but it offers a fabulous window to some of Australia’s evolution. Harking back to times when this dry dusty area was instead rich rainforest peppered with spring-fed lakes and pools – now limestone beds packed full of fossilised bones.
The national park seems to be in cahoots with Adels Grove, with a lot of encouragement for visitors to do a paid trip with a tour guide. We tried to get on a tour but none were running, so we did a self-guided visit. There was very limited information provided on boards, and may fossils with no details beside them. You had to use a lot of imagination to understand what you’re looking at, and a lot of Googling later on when we finally got enough phone signal to connect to internet.
It was a slow old journey which led eventually to tarmac, and then another 200km to our destination for the night, Camooweal. There we did a massive clean, inside and out, to try and rid ourselves of some of the red dust we had accumulated over the past few days.
It is amazing how many caravans are on the road – it is not even school holidays any more, and everywhere is heaving. Stations like this are literally raking the money in. We park in rows in a paddock, each van having access to water, a shower and toilet block, and a country music singer around the campfire at night. All this for $20 a van – that’ll be around $1,500 dollars per night earned…not bad for a patch of dirt.
After the area was mined for zinc, silver and lead, the property was purchased by a French botanist who worked for the government. He spent his life planting an incredible botanical garden, irrigating his prize plants from the river, and recording the flora and fauna around the property in meticulous notes, only to have the whole lot burn down from a fire that escaped from a local mine. He no doubt cried “Merde” and promptly laid down in a deep depression and passed away.
I would definitely recommend not listening to the advice they give you to “come out here early”. By lunchtime we were on our own, and what a fantastic place this is. One of the most beautiful locations we have ever paddled in with absolutely prolific birdlife echoing across the gorge. Apparently there are freshwater crocodiles in here – we didn’t spot any but did hear at least one suspect splash as we travelled silently along.
There’s one short portage, no problem for us in lightweight boats, then the second part of the paddle was even more spectacular. The archer fish were out in shoals, spitting water up at me (did I look like a fly?). Fly catchers darted around above the water doing a much better job of catching their prey.
On the way back to the car we stopped at the information boards and read about the significant aboriginal history of the area. The gorge and surrounding area has been lived in for 35,000 years, according to the latest radiocarbon dating of artefacts found here. Not for the 200 years as you would think just reading the information back at Adels Grove. Just think on that for a moment. A continuous, sustainable, culture in this area stretching back 32,000 years before the Pyramids were being built. Nowhere else in the world has anything like that.
After showers, we headed out to the Sunset Tavern, nestled along the coast at Karumba Point with a perfect westerly view across the Gulf towards the setting sun. We ordered dinner, a bottle of drinkable white wine and sat back to enjoy the show.
After a 4 year hiatus, it has just restarted to the relief of the town, courtesy of a Chinese company (of course!). The gravity fed pipeline that transport the slurry stretches from the mine 302km to the south, right to the loading dock. Pretty neat and cheap way to transport it for 9 cents a ton!
We managed to find a tour boat going out in the afternoon with two spaces (it’s busy season up here!) and headed out. The family running the trip gave us a good running commentary on the river and the town, of course starting as most trips do with “European exploration”, not a word about the previous 50,000 or so years of human occupation in the area. It isn’t easy to find information. I’ve just spent 20 mins with Google and have at least established that the area was home to five distinct Aboriginal groups, all of whom had a seperate language, all of which are now officially classed as extinct.
Drinks were passed around as we watched the sun dip into the Gulf. At this moment the nearest capital city to us is Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea, not Darwin.
Before long we had backed the caravan into the workshop and Mr A was inflating tyres as Bushy did his work, welding the new brackets to the front right hand side of the van. He did a thorough check of all the other brackets, and added some extra weld where he felt needed the strength.
By the time we pulled out at about 10.30am we felt happy that all was securely in place and Bushy reassured us it should stay that way for the foreseeable future.
The air feels lest dusty up here, and it is so good to see the ocean again.
There’s a lovely looking Tavern right on the water front, with a surprisingly interesting menu. It has a large beer garden overlooking the water and sunset, and we have earmarked a couple of seats for tomorrow afternoon.
We returned to camp to watch the sunset over the wetlands, before making dinner with our fresh veg. We watched the whistling kids flying in for the fish scraps being shared by those lucky enough to catch something today. The birds swooped down and caught snacks tossed in the air – quite a sight.
Mr A had more funeral arrangements to make and accomodation to book in the UK…I dread to see what our mobile phone bill will be this month after all these calls! This is a beautiful change of scenery for us though, and we think we’ll enjoy our stay here.
On from there we cycled to the only tourist activity we could see in the town itself, a 6km walk/ride along the outskirts of town.
We mostly followed the dry river bed, and all was going well, until that dreaded exclamation from Mrs A “Oh no….puncture”.
I nipped back to camp on my bike, and returned with the car. Mrs A was soon loaded up with her bike and returned to camp, where we spent the next 3 hours picking bindi spikes out of both of our tyres! I’ve never ridden in this type of country before, so was pretty shocked how it has destroyed even my thick tyres. At least my tubeless set up kept me inflated, well until I started picking out the thorns! We are now going to have the petite (but usually very reliable) MTB that Catherine rides converted to a tubeless set up as well. Definitely worth it. So no more riding until we get to Darwin in a couple of weeks.
At least we have good phone signal here in tiny little Georgetown. It’s been an experience, and makes you realise from talking to the locals, what are some of the challenges of living in a remote area. No doctors, dentists, supermarkets (one of the petrol stations stocks some basic supplies). Or any other trappings we take for granted in the city – restaurants, hairdressers, clothes shops etc. And even this place isn’t remote by some Australian standards, ie. it has tarmac road access!
I have to say I have become a fan of Flight Centre today. I booked through them and they have provided superlative service, so easy to get hold of a real person and talk to them. As compared to going through Qantas, where I spent 45mins on hold trying to even speak to their call centre to resolve an issue. And Flight centre were cheaper for the same tickets. Excellent.
We stuck around for a couple of rounds of lassoing bullocks and bull riding, before heading back to camp.
While at the butchers yesterday we had been recommended to head back to the rodeo grounds this evening for dinner. What occasion could be bigger than the town’s Rodeo? So off we went…
We had a selection of dishes from a buffet and a couple of spirits from the bar. It felt a bit like being at a country wedding where we didn’t know anyone. We sat up high in the bleachers and people watched… so many stetsons! Yeah hah!
