This is why we love Katherine...

...beacuse Nitmiluk (Katherine Gorge) is only 30km down the road.

We went back there today, after a pretty average week, with the idea of going canoeing. This unfortunately, ended in disappointment as the gorge was closed yesterday to swimmers and canoes as the river has come up enough for salties to get through - BUMMER. Highly dissappointed as last time we were there, we said we would come back to canoe. Oh well, there is always next dry I guess.

We did end up going on a cruise though, and it is such a beautiful gorge. Different from Canarvon and Cania and highly, highly impressive.

It was hard to believe that this place could get any more awesome. One awesome feature I would like to share with you, are these bottle wren birds that only grow to a maximum of 12cm - SO CUTE. They build their nests from the top of a cave out of mud that looks like bottles and dart in and out - they are simply adorable! We were also greeted by a pretty impressive parrot and the end of our tour...

 Certainly a beautiful place in God's creation. It was great to see it from the river point of view, but we are definately keen to do the Jatbulla trail, from the Gorge to Edith falls sometime when its not too hot, and to canoe up the gorge, hopefully up all 13 (can you believe we only saw the first two?)

Many blessings to you in your week to come! Hope you have adventures and a heck of a lot of fun!

It's a looong way to Tipperary...

Yay! We were finally granted access to the Cutta Cutta Caves - complimentary access! (yes, it was for free considering we were duped out of a tour last time). This was just one limestone cave, full of stalectites and calcium crystals. The name Cutta Cutta comes from the local Jaowyn people and it means 'many stars' (cutta being the word for star, repeating it meaning many). This was because of the glittery nature of calcite crystals - they really are beautiful (and difficult to capture). Interestingly, indigenous folk do not like going under ground because they believe the rainbow serpent lives there, and will get them if they go there. So the cave was never actually used by the indigenous people for this reason. It was only named Cutta Cutta after the land had been returned to the traditional owners. (Before that it had been something silly, like Smith's cave, cos smith was the dude that found it when some of his cows toppled in - the indigenous story is WAY cooler...) The othere interesting thing about the cave was that it was really really humid. This was because there was a pool right at the back. We didn't get to see the pool, but there were some pretty impressive stalectites and curtain formations in there..

Unfortunately after that exciting episode - Caleb had to work. Sunday afternoon he drove with his workmates to Tipperary Station - one of the most famous stations in the Territory, which is really by the sounds of it, a rich man's tax dodge. Seriously, its the rich guys that own it, one fella even installing his own zoo complete with giraffes and rhinos! These were no longer there of course, and Caleb was there just doing a job on a tractor part...ask him about it, I think that would be best! He did however, bring back some pretty impressive photos of the place...



               

What to do on a Saturday Morning?

Greetings my fellow martians! This morning, I was rudely awaken by my husband insisting he needed to be at work at 6:30 am an that I needed to drive him. So now, I am awake, with nothing to do until the shops open in Katherine. What to do? I know, I'll have a good ol' one sided chat with my ether friends - that being whoever is reading this blog post!

The past two weeks of the Mayne Adventure have been a touch dull compared to the rest of the adventure. They have consisted of work, caravan tweeking and church and thats pretty much it. We did attempt to visit the Cutta Cutta Caves about 30km down the road last weekend, but they seemed to be open on NT Time (No Time, or Not Today, Not Tomorrow, Not Tuesday, Not Thursday) In reality the guy running the tours was running late, so he cancelled the last one, meaning Caleb and I missed out! We will try again tomorrow, hopefully the first or second tour of the day proves more successful!



The van at Caleb's place of work



No doubt by now, you all have heard of our fabulous news about the air conditioning! Well, when we installed it, we had to make the sacrifice of our 12 volt ceiling fan (well, actually, we asked the air con guy to put it in, but I think he was working within the same time paradigm mentioned above) So last weekend, Caleb industriously cut another hole in our caravan roof, to put our ceiling fan back in. So now we really are living in luxury - air con and a ceiling fan to keep the air moving - good thing we don't pay power bills at the caravan park!



Caleb Installing the ceiling fan at his work -
NOTE the mango tree in the background!





Precarious much?



 Also last weekend, we checked out the Katherine cinema and saw Tomorrow, When the War Began. Finally, this story has been made into a move! Good cinema too - big. (Well, bigger than the transformed squash courts back home - don't get me wrong though, NOTHING will ever beat the Kingaroy Cinemas!)

We have slowly been making friends at the local Baptist church. The church its self is great - full of great characters. The only thing is that in Katherine, there is such a transient population, consisting mainly of travellers such as ourselves, and RAAFies, as we call them, who are posted at the Tindal Base 15km south of Katherine. So getting to know people is difficult. Still, we have been to a lunch and a dinner and a games night, and I have been to a Bible study, which was nice. Last Sunday we had lunch with a few other people at the pastor's house. Curry! mmmm....

This weekend, well, Caleb is working today, so tomorrow it will be Church and then Cutta Cutta, hopefully!

Before I go, I have two things I wanted to share with you, these two things being two of the reasons I've written this post. The first is the NT friendliness (That really, really matches the whole concept of NT time). I guess it's a good thing in the Territory that you always know where you stand to a business - basically no-where. I have met all of one nice customer service person, and that was at the Katherine visitors information centre. The post lady, the woolies ladies, the air con guy - all are unhelpful and grumpy. I will now share an example of this attitude with you.

During our travels we have noticed that washing machines in caravan parks do not work that well, so we try and use laudromats (Which sometimes are little better) unless Lisa is lazy and doesn't feel like driving to the laurdromat. So, I found a laundromat in Katherine to use last Saturday. To those unexperienced travellers, it is the norm for laundromats and coin operated washing machines in general, to only use $1 coins (very, very painful) and for laundromats to be open 24hrs. this particular one opens at 6:30am. Good laundromats, however, will have a change vending machine. Take a look at the Katherine's laundromat change policy, and how much the Dry Cleaners like it....

How very, very friendly, wouldn't you agree? (holds up sarcasm sign)

The last and final thing I want to share with you all, my dear friends and family, is a much much brighter note. Springvale, where we are currently staying, is beautiful - many birds, and springs, and greenery. Trees planted over a hundred years ago thriving, and the river a stone's throw away. It does however, get hot and humid at times, and despite all the springs around Springvale, some of the birds get a little desperate, as you saw in my previous post in the picture with the cockies. In taking that picture, I was really hoping to snap something else - this....

would you believe there were two more on this set of taps before I could get my camera out? How cute are they!?

Until next time, so long. Live long and prosper.


PS you know you have been watching too much Big Bang Theory when you can quote Star Trek without actually seeing Star Trek...

Around our Temporary home - Springvale

Hello once again from Katherine, Northern Territory. As I have had a few days to spare on my hands, I decided to take a few pictures of the place we are temporarily calling home - more will probably follow, this is what I have so far.

Springvale Homestead was the first settlement in the Katherine area, and is now a caravan park/camping area/motel/tour operator. It's right on the Katherine River and is approximately 6km out of town.

 The swampy land around Springvale - nobody swims here except the ducks.

 The cockys along with the rest of the birds feel the heat - so they drink from driping taps

 The Original homestead on the bank of the river - now reception and a nice place to have devonshire tea, apparently....

 My favourite tree - planted by Alfred Giles who founded the homestead and was the first person to live in the Katherine area.

 The guinea fowl population will soon out number the residents of Springvale - despite their odd-looking presence with small heads and dumb faces

The Katherine Low Level Brige - 3km on the road into town. A popular (and not without reason) swimming hole, although probably won't be during the wet.

Our little van parked at Springvale - note the air conditioner on top. Needless to say that I can no longer pop the top myself. I'll need to build up my muscles to lift the baby - but gee it keeps the lil van cold!!

Litchfield and Darwin...and finally, air conditioning!

Well hello. And after a few weeks of back to work drearyness finally we did something of interest that I can post about on the blog!

To start off, let me just clarify that work hasn't been all that bad. I have been in communication with the good people of PCA Kingaroy. Not anymore though, I have a new job starting in exactly a week, with the Roper Gulf Shire Council. It should be a great experience. It is a six month contract, so it looks like we will be in Katherine for a while!

Caleb's job is going well as well - still getting a feel for the workshop. He's working with a good bunch of people though, which is always a plus!

So, I'm not sure how much a lot of you know about our air con debarcle. Basically it a was a whole lot of 'Should we, shouldn't we'? To put air con in properly cost a pretty penny, let me tell you! Due to the size of our van, which is really really small, the cheaper choices were not really an option due to 1) a lack of free space and 2) not wanting a huge thing sticking out the side creating bad wind resistance and a dangerous hazard of falling and breaking and costing even more money...so cutting that boring story short, we found out our friends Brian and Debbie would be in Darwin last weekend, and thought, we're going up anyway, its getting hot, lets get air con while we are there!

Saturday included lots of fun and laughs exploring Litchfield NP. It's about an hour from Darwin and Simply Beautiful. A great place to swim as well! An extremely different experience to going to Kakadu - where there was a lot of cultural experiences, birdlife to spot and driving....Litchfeild is smaller, and the waterfalls are more easily accessible. Due to some recent spattering of rain (no where near as much as Kingaroy and the rest of the south east I hear...) everything was greened up. The only problem? way way too many tourists....

There was also a really interesting piece of history. We visited the Blyth Homestead, which is an original building, an out post of Sargent Station. Inside was a whole lot of info about the family that ran the station, and goodness gracious, those pioneers did it tough! Here was me complaining about the flies (as they were back on assault...grrr...) and the heat, reading about this family of ten or so, getting up at ridiculous hours, working 15 hours a day at the tin mines, having hands squashed and making pets out of crocodiles...yeah, it was intense...needless to say I shut up pretty quick!

The termite mounds were also noteworthy. Now, I know this was a place my family visited on their great big holiday, as we used to call it (when I was about 5...so I don't remember much). BUT I do remember the photo Dad wanted of our landcruiser in between two great big magnetic termite mounds (please let this be the correct photo!!) I found it quite amusing that the termite mounds are now fenced off and you can't even walk there....you can only look at them from a distance....My how the times change....

After we were finished exploring Litchfield we drove on to Darwin where we met up with Brian and Debbie who were staying with their daughter. We had a great time, and really appreciated Lacey's hospitality. We went to the Mindal Beach markets and watched the sunset on the beach. Great times. Did I mention we were eating Thai food? We were eating Thai food. Really good Thai food. (That encouraged me to attempt another curry..hopefully its not too hot!)

The next day we left our van with the air con people, and explored the Darwin Military Museum. This was fantastic - did you know Darwin was bombed in 64 raids between 1942-43? 253 people lost their lives, and Darwin was just flattened! Our generation can't begin to imagine a war that affected the entire world...it really was right on our doorstep, with raids spreading as fair inland as Katherine. Wow. Hopefully we will get to see more of the military history. The Stuart Hwy (between Darwin and Katherine...it goes further as well) is lined with WWII air fields.

So that was our exciting weekend. Air con in, we slept while shivering last night, which was a nice change from sweating...saw some friends from back home, some great places and learnt about one of the more dramatic events in our nation's history. Great! hopefully, the adventures to continue...