Today to soak up some time we all went for another half hour drive north east out to Katherine Gorge which is situated in the Nitmiluk National Park. There are many nature trails to walk along that are well signposted in the area. I took the Baruwei walk which was a 5km looped walk that started and ended at the visitor centre. The visitor centre has various displays and a nice café connected to it.
I went for the walk by myself with my day pack filled with a bottle of water, some snacks, two GPS trackers, a handheld UHF, stills camera and even a first aid kit! I have to keep testing out the setup I have with this bag as I will be using it for the Mitchell Falls walk later on in the trip. Mum and dad stayed out on the veranda at the visitor centre and had a coffee and some cake; they’d been on a similar walk before last time they were here.
I started out on my walk and passed about half a dozen people on the flat section. Once I came across the stairs part there was nobody in sight so I took some pictures of pretty much anything that caught my eye including the stairs themselves. I then came across a nice lookout overlooking the river at the bottom of the gorge. As it so happens I hit the lookout at the same time the river tour boat floated up the river past me.
I gave it a big wave and quite a few of them waved back so I took some pictures and took in the scenery. After all of this I packed the camera back into my bag and took off further up the mountain. About 5 minutes later a big sulphur crested cockatoo swooped past me and landed on a tree not 5 meters away from me. I tried to get the camera out in time to take a good picture but the bird moved on before I could get a good shot. It continued to hop from tree to tree peeling bark off of them, sort of odd I thought but that’s just what they do I suppose.
A few more minutes of walking led me up to the local water supply and purification plant, right on top of the hill. There was a water bubbler there for tourists to take a drink from so I took a mouthful and continued on again. For the remaining half an hour of the walk I continued to take pictures of whatever caught my eye including different coloured mountain sides, sunlit winding tracks and lots of different plants.
I got back to the visitor centre at around 9:45 am (local time) and was just in time for the breakfast menu at the café there. The food was pretty good and the people were very friendly, I would definitely recommend spending some time here.
Here’s some of the pictures I took, enjoy!
Thanks for reading,
Trav.
