Day 20: Katherine - Katherine Gorge - Mataranka

We wake up at 7 am. Have breakfast outside and drive to Katherine to do some shopping, refuel, and get some coal. Unfortunately, we only arrive at Katherine Gorge around 1 pm. The sun is scorching and the thermometer shows 40 degrees. It's humid again today and therefore quite exhausting. We briefly consider whether we should do one of the walks, but then fortunately decide on the boat ride at 2 pm. Before we depart, we meet Josef again. He did the boat tour at 11 am and can highly recommend it.

Michael is hopeful that we will only be a small group on the boat tour. But just before it starts, a bus arrives with his favorite friends and a quiet boat ride is history. The camera shutters are constantly clicking. We are glad that we chose to explore the gorge by boat. On the walks, the gorge can only be viewed from above and you only get a limited impression of its dimensions. Since the water level is still quite low, we drive to the first landing stage and then march about 500 meters on foot along the river through the gorge. The sun is mercilessly burning. Then we take the boat upstream again before returning the same way. The boat tour takes about 2 hours.

We want to get a little closer to the Red Centre, so we drive about 130 kilometers south. The roads outside of cities/towns are mostly straight. Curves are a foreign word here.

We decide on Mataranka as our place to stay overnight. Here there are hot springs where we want to take a bath after a hot day. We arrive at the campsite around 6 pm. It's a real place to retreat. Very simple, colorful, and chill. We still supply our air conditioning with electricity and then head straight to the hot springs. We read in the guidebook that there are many bats there during the rainy season. The path to the pools leads through a tropical forest that looks quite desert-like. The unpleasant smell already suggests that the bats are there and when we arrive, we see hundreds if not thousands of them fluttering through the air. The spectacle lasts about 10 minutes and then they disappear, except for a few loners. The water in the pools is cooler than expected. It's getting dark and the pool lights come on. Michael spots wild boars in the underbrush, but they quickly make a run for it. We make our way back to the camper and cook noodles with barramundi. We got the tip for the barramundi fish from Josef. It really tastes delicious!

12.11.2016

Accommodation: Mataranka Homestead Tourist Resort (1 night 30 AUD), quirky backpacker place, very basic, sanitary facilities outdated and partly dirty, onlookers while showering (big frog eyes), fast free Wi-Fi - we can finally upload the reports from the past week, direct access to the hot springs

Weather: sunny, 40 degrees

182 kilometers today out of a total of 1,360 km