Day 138: Katherine Gorge

It was an early start this morning to make our 7AM breakfast barge cruise on Katherine Gorge. We managed to park in the wrong car park and had to run half a mile to the jetty only to find there was a problem with the boat and the departure was delayed by 30 minutes. Even if I wanted to complain I was unable too, it took me the 30 minutes just to get my breath back!

We did a 2 hour trip and think now that maybe the 4 hour, if not the full day, would have been better. The 2 hour was over before it began and the tantalising glimpse of what we could have seen if we continued was enough for us to drag our heels back to the camp site debating whether to go again.

There was one barge change after breakfast, the gorge is made up of 13 separate gorges separated by rocks and the longest trip only takes you to 5 of them. On the short walk to the next barge we viewed 10,000 year old Aboriginal rock art paintings belonging to the Jawoyn people who are the custodians of Nitmiluk National Park. They were pretty amazing, and huge, just the fact that they have lasted so long is impressive in itself.

We also saw Jedda's Leap, named after it was featured in the 1955 Charles Chauvel film, "Jedda" where Marbuk and Jedda leapt to their death.

The gorge was eerily quiet, there seemed to be no wildlife, even on the desolate Kings Canyon there were birds to be found.

Emelie