18 April 2013
Okay, bad pun, I know – but
it was incredibly beautiful and amazing!
We’ll get to that in a minute.
First, I promise to take
photos tomorrow morning of the tent on the car. Unfolding, and then folding back up. We got up early this morning for a
tour. We slept better last night,
and it actually was cold in the middle of the night! That middle-of-the-night bathroom run is a pain, since the
ladder is in the middle of the doorway and that means rolling on your stomach
and backing out the door, legs hanging out until there’s enough leg to hook
onto the ladder. We inevitably
wake each other up during this maneuver.
Second, here are shots of
the Stuart Highway. Looking south
and then north. That’s what the
road looks like. You can see why I
was driving 120-130 kmh on this road!
Okay, the Katherine River
Gorge. We signed up for the river
cruise, because other than hiking in the 90-100 degree heat, there isn’t any
other way to see the gorge. Oh,
sorry, one could ride in a helicopter.
We aren’t those ones. So
the gorge river cruise was our best option.
It was amazing!!!!! Beautiful, relaxing, some hiking, some
walking, little bit of swimming, and just so gorgeous!
Basically, the area started
as a huge sandstone escarpment.
Over the millennia, the seasonal rain found weak points in the
sandstone, and began to cut in and erode away channels, which have become the
gorges we see today. These are
huge sandstone cliffs on both sides of what is now a permanent river, the Katherine
River, which runs through a series of thirteen to fifteen gorges. The reason they’re considered separate
gorges is because there are areas between the gorges that separate the water,
so that a boat can’t go through continuously. Plus there are very small sub-gorges that may or may not
connect into the main gorges, so the number varies depending on who is doing
the counting.
Also, because of the way the
weak points in the sandstone go, the river zigzags, often turning 90 degrees in
one direction or the other. The
Aboriginal legend is that the snake god (didn’t catch the name) created the
river in his image, and that’s why it’s so zigzaggy.
Katherine Gorge is in the
Nitmiluk National Park – this is owned by one of the Aboriginal tribes (and I
have no idea how to spell the name of the tribe, it sounded something like
Yarwin but I don’t really know).
The Australian government finally gave the people back there land, but
as some of the Maori people in NZ, the tribe agreed to a partnership with the
Aussie government – so the land is part of the national park system, and is
administered by both the government and the tribe. Interesting, and a major relief after some of what we’ve
heard from Aussies about how they view Aboriginal peoples. (At times it seems like the Deep South
in the 1950s or 60s, with major prejudices and segregation. Very depressing!)
We had two crew members, and
twelve other passengers. Our
captain (or pilot) was a big Kiwi guy, Jake, from Whangarei, on the North
Island, which we had gone through on our NZ trek. Our narrator and cultural specialist, Tyrus, is from the
local Aboriginal tribe, the people who administer the park. He talked about the traditional names
and uses of a variety of plants, the relationship of the people to the land –
and he also had a very low-key and dry sense of humor. (He said his grandfather said, when the
government gave the land back to the original people, some of the
Euro-Australians complained that the Aborigines would take the land away. His comment was he had no idea where
they thought the tribe would take the land and the gorge, it was obviously
still there.)
The two of them, Jake and
Tyrus, were actually the most interesting people to talk with on this
tour. There were some interesting
people – an American couple traveling for 6 months to celebrate the husband’s
retirement. A brother and sister
from Sydney who were taking several months to tour the parts of Australia they
never see. Interesting people
doing things off the beaten path, as are we.
But with Jake and Tyrus, we
could ask the questions that have been bothering us – how are the Aboriginal
people treated? What’s with the
segregation we see? And the
poverty? Are there integration
efforts?
Plus Jake is Maori, and
his mother’s family is related to the Maori Queen, so we had questions for him
as well. We actually ended up
having a lovely lunch with Jake – Tyrus had to go to a meeting, although I
think he might have been a bit shy about hanging out with old people. But this is what both Richard and I
enjoy most about traveling – getting a chance to hang out and really talk to
local people, find out their views and their culture. So we really enjoyed the two of them.
Okay, so, the tour – we
walked down to the boat, climbed in, took off. Went through the first gorge, which is 3.something
kilometers long. Reached the line
of rocks across the middle, docked the boat (as in right up against a rock
ledge and tie the lines around a convenient tree) – walked over rocks and paths
to a second boat on the other side of the portage point (or haulover, as we
would say in the VI). In that
boat, second gorge – another 3.something kilometers. Second portage walk.
Third boat, third gorge, just about 1 kilometer. Turn around and do the same thing in
the other direction. Except that
instead of going directly back to the park dock, we tied up at a different
location and hiked in to a waterfall pool.
This was AMAZING! Well, the hike wasn’t – this was the
kind of hike where you slog through sand (yes, the sandstone erodes to sand, so
there are sand beaches and banks throughout the gorge system) – then on narrow
paths above dry riverbeds full of large rocks – then clamber and slide and
climb and try not to fall down over rocks and boulders, part of the time with a
chain to hold onto, because even a mountain goat could use assistance
here. Oh, and across a small
river, again with a chain so you don’t get washed off the rocks. Yeah, can you tell the rock clambering
wasn’t our favorite part? Uh huh. Having a sense of balance would
help. Being under 50 yrs old would
help. Heck, being graceful would
help.
But we made it, often with
help from Jake. Changed into
swimwear, and climbed over rocks into this beautiful turquoise pool of water
fed by a waterfall!! So incredibly
gorgeous, so unbelievably cold!!!
The kind of cold water that takes your breath away when you first get
in! I swam across to the
waterfall, and got under the sides – it’s really hard to swim up to a waterfall
and not get your eyes full of water!
So I hung out at the side of the falls, then swam back. It was glorious!!!
Okay, so, some highlights –
we saw two crocodiles! One was a
little guy, maybe a meter long or so, hanging out on a rock, sunning. He stayed put for quite a while, but
finally got tired of boats of people, and slipped into the water. The second was larger, maybe 1.3 – 1.5
meters long, and he was swimming in the middle of the river – we saw him as we
approached, first looking like a disturbance in the water, finally looking like
a tail with the scales sticking up – then he swam to one side and we could see
he was a young croc – he stayed around for a few moments, then plunged under
the water. These were both freshwater
crocodiles, or freshies, as they’re known around here. They have the long narrow snout, and
are very shy and not aggressive.
They live only in freshwater.
We didn’t see any saltwater
crocodiles, known as salties – they can live in saltwater or fresh water, and
during rainy season they’ll swim as far up river as they can, just to find
other things to eat. Salties have
been seen in Katherine River this season, although not recently. And there are stories that during the
various floods in the past twenty years, when the Katherine River overflowed
the banks and flooded the town of Katherine, there were salties swimming down
the main streets. Salties are the
mean crocs, the ones with the reputation of eating people, dogs, horses. They’re the ones with the big wide
snout, and grow over 5 meters long!
They also attack brightly colored objects for no apparent reason, and so
the salty test is just a bright red buoy floating in the river – if there’s a
salty, it’ll come attack the red buoy.
If the buoy is fine, it’s pretty much a sign of no salty in the
area.
As Tyrus said – if you jump
in the water and a croc swims away, he’s a freshie. If a croc swims toward you saying “I’m your friend,” he’s a
salty!
I could describe the beauty
of the gorges, but I think the photos speak for themselves. Incredible scenery, rugged,
awe-inspiring – all those things.
Look at the photos. Click
to enlarge them for more detail. And the colors really are that intense: the deep cerulean blue sky; greens ranging from deep forest green to bright kelly to pale sage; and the rich reds, siennas, umbers, golds, terra cottas of the soil and sand and rocks.
We had a great day! Fun, interesting, active, all
that. Which of course means that
we’re fairly tired, and ready for a good night’s sleep in the tent.
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