Katherine, this is where we were rejoined with Lynette and Warren who had been off at the 3 day music festival in Birdsville. We will then travel together for the next 3 months.

We spent the day setting up and restocking with food and water. Water is becoming the challenge. Fuel is easy to get everywhere, but water is not readily available and in a lot of places the water needs to be boiled before it is drinkable. Our van capacity is 200 litres, which lasts about 1 week, so we need to plan and carry sufficient water to get us through to the various fill points.

Warren and I went to the Katherine museum, the girls weren't interested. We spent nearly 3 hours looking and reading the various exhibits about Katherine. We watched a video on the 1998 floods, where the town received 3 years rain in the space of 2 days. The main street had 2 metres of water flowing through it. The army was called in to assist, and apparently they were chased out of the Woolworths store by a 4 metre crocodile. Woolworths really are the fresh food people. The current river level indicator was about 6 metres, during the 1998 flood, the river peaked at 20 metres.

We also visited the Katherine hot springs, but the ones at Mataranka were heaps better.

Next day was a cruise by Warren and myself on the Katherine Gorge. These are a series of 13 gorges, however the cruise only does the first 3. You travel up each waterway until the end, then you scramble accross up to 300 metres of walkways and rocks, jump on another boat and do the same thing. The boats are all positioned during the wet season, when all the gorges are connected by water. The girls had done this back in November 2015 when they did their Ghan journey, so opted to not do it again.

Things are really hotting up, the days are now hitting mid 30's and the nights are a balmy low 20's. I am writing this from Kakadu, and last night it was still 30 degrees at 9.00PM. It's good that we have aircon when we are pugged into 240 volts.

It is now 4 weeks since we left home, how time flies when you're having fun. I haven't had to get the shovel out for Jo-anne yet. We're not missing work one bit.

Next blog will be Kakadu.