26/07/2004 - Stage 2, Day 59, Page 3 of 3 - Limmen Bight River to Darwin, NT
We left the Limmen Bight River the next morning after trying our hand at fishing again - still no luck. I saw a small crocodile swimming up river that morning, but it was still too early to take a picture and it was only his nose poking out of the water anyway. Headed back to the main road and then north again to Roper Bar which turned out to be a certified dive (a shit hole). From there we went west along the Roper Hwy to Mataranka which is on the Stuart Hwy. Bree Lloyd had told me that Mataranka was awesome when she went there years ago on a school camp, but unfortunatley since that time the bats had moved in! By god it stank! There were millions of bats in all the trees and bat poop on EVERYTHING!
Bradley went for a swim in the spring but I ran out of camera batteries when I was focusing to take a picture of him in the spring with all the german tourists. Sorry again Sylv!
Mataranka stank so badly that we busted a move and drove to Katherine that afternoon (17/07/2004). We'd been told by Matt that Katherine had the best Thai restaurant in Australia and we VERY keen to verify this gargantuan claim. Matt said that the place was on the corner of the Victoria and Stuart Highways, and that it had both inside and outdoor seating. In addition, you could bring your own esky and park it up next to your table to ensure you made a night of it! According to Matt, an Australian man and his Thai wife ran the place and they grew all of the thai herbs at their home down the road.
We were most upset when we got there to find that the place had been sold and was now a really stodgy Australian Chinese place! The thai's had sold out and bought the Outback Disposals camping shop next door, so that night our huge gastronomic expectations turned to dust (well, stodgy chinese actually).
Not to be put off the scent of good food, the next morning (18/07/2004) I went into the camping shop and managed to get three awesome thai recipes from the Thai lady! I've put them up on my food page. The Thai lady (who's name I didn't get) said she was thinking of giving thai cooking lessons in the future, so keep your ears peeled when you pass through Katherine, because her recipes are smashing! My guess is that Matt's claim of 'best Thai restaurant in Australia' was most likely on the money! Before leaving, she even gave us a huge bunch of lemon grass, thai basil and lime leaves out of her garden!
After our grand success on the recipe gathering front we went out to the Katherine Show Rodeo for the afternoon. About half way through it I sent Diana a message saying that we were at a cool rodeo and that the steer wrestling competition was about to start. About 5 minutes later I sent here another message to say that the first steer wrestling cow boy was on his way to hospital in an ambulance with a badly broken leg! The rodeo was great though, apart from the leg business. I'd never seen one before and had a great time. The last event was really cool - the poddy ride. This was where really young kids get bucked off little poddy calves (cows so young that they are still drinking mum's milk). Sorry Sylv - no pics from the rodeo as we left the camera in the car!
After the poddy ride we drove out to Katherine Gorge to camp for the night. Didn't look at the gorge that night because we got in pretty late and just camped up. Nice camping ground though. That night we had a few visitors who managed to steal and eat all of our sweet potatoes! Here's the culprit the next morning trying to suck up.
There were loads of birds around that morning so I put out some bread and jam to get them close for a picture. Some blue-faced honeyeaters (Entomyzon cyanotis).
Saw some great bowerbirds (Chlamydera nuchalis), but they were missing the classic pink crest on the napes of their necks. Saw one with the pink nape, although didn't manage to get a picture of that one.
Then some apostlebirds (Struthidea cinerea) arrived on the scene.
I also saw a blue-winged kookaburra (Dacelo leachii) but he took off before I could get a photo.
Next day we ended up having to drive to Darwin because I had to catch a flight to Melbourne for my job interview that night, so we still haven't seen the Katherine Gorge. While I was in Melbourne bradley lounged around Darwin checking out the sites. He camped for a night at Gunn Point and was lucky enough to be seranaded by the army playing war games like 'shoot-em up' and 'blow-em up'. What peace!
Whilst visiting Howard Springs he had the pants scared off him by a friendly goanna!
Well I got back to Darwin very late last night and today we've spent the day uploading the site. Heading out of town now on our next big adventure - not sure what it is though!