Week 16
Hi Everyone, The first three days of the week, we were in Katherine, waiting for our relatives. We spent our time by taking care of James, doing homework and swimming at the Hot Springs. The springs had a constant 32 degrees which is just right. I definitely want to go back there. We were waiting for Jackie, our Aunt, David, our Uncle, Ella and Sam, our younger cousins. It was on our third day of waiting that Jackie and David arrived, it was very late, but they had been driving from Darwin after a flight mix up. They next day, we had breakfast and James and Sam got out the shovels. They had so much fun together playing in the dirt. Sam is only 10 days younger than James, so they both were at a similar stage. After they had enough digging in the dirt, they sat down for a book with Mum. It was funny watching them walk around. James had his ‘Blankie’ and Sam had his ‘Mummy Top.’ Later in the day, we showed David, Jackie and the kids the Hot Springs and we had a wonderful swim there. The next day, David and Jackie went to the Katherine Gorge with us. Even just coming from the Bungle Bungles, it was amazing. On the way to the boat ramp we saw many bats hanging in trees, I had never seen a bat outside a cave during the day before, but these bats didn’t even have a cave. I was also surprised by the amount of activity. There were bats flying around into other trees, bat poo littered the path, some of it was very fresh. When we got to the boat ramp, we hopped onto the boat and went down the river into the Katherine Gorge. We had to swap boats as there was a heap of rocks preventing the boat from going the whole way through the gorge. On the short walk to the other boat, we saw some aboriginal rock art. We then jumped onto the second boat. While we were on the second boat, the guide told us that in the wet season (Summer) they pilot the boats back to the boat ramp to do maintenance. Also, for wet season tours, they have jet skis as they are able to go across strong currents in the gorge. The guide also showed us an intersection of gorges where a vortex occurs every wet season. He gave us proof by showing us the direction that the trees were growing. The currents pushed them to grow in a certain direction in the wet season, and we could clearly see that the trees were going around in a circle. We then turned back and hopped onto our first boat. We saw a few crocodiles on the way back. | We stayed the night at the Adelaide River Caravan Park and the next morning, we headed into Litchfield National Park. The first thing that we did there was go to the magnetic termite mounds. They are just normal termite mounds, but the termites have been clever enough to make their mounds skinny and long so that they get the sun shining all of it’s light and heat on the mounds. This controls the temperature inside the mounds. After that, we visited a giant ‘Cathederal’ ant hill that was five or six metres tall. After all of this, we drove to the Wangi Falls where we set up camp. We went for a swim and I found that I could stand in most of the water.. It looked like it was a lake, but the water continued down a small stream. The next day, we drove out separately from David and Jackie to the Lost City. I was expecting to see an old ranch, but it was just a pile of large black rocks. It was interesting, but not what I was expecting. After that, we met up again with our relatives at Bluey’s Waterhole where we had a nice swim. We split up again and we went to the Cascades. It was a long walk and where we had a swim.. I didn’t enjoy that swim. Afterwards, we had to walk all the way back. We then joined up with David and Jackie again back at camp and enjoyed a dinner together. And that was our sixteenth week that we spent with our relatives on our Journey Around Australia. Cameron |
