Four hours driving from Darwin brought us to Edith Falls, where everyone took a well needed dip in the upper pool, other than myself and a Swiss lady who thought that a 45 min fast walk along a rocky track sounded more appealing…
We moved on from Edith Falls to Katherine, the last town of any decent size for 600km, in order to watch the AFL final. Crazy game in in which ironically for what is known as Aussie rules football, seemingly doesn’t have any rules. Bonus points for atmosphere, watching it in a predominately Aboriginal bar, clearly strong supporters of the ultimately unsuccessful West Coast Eagles.
Even for a game involving no rules and played on an oval pitch, the novelty and interest factor wore off fairly quickly though. I discovered that Katherine had a rich railway history, including a station, engine, bridge and water tanks, which were just about interesting enough to justify walking around in 37C heat and high humidity.
One unexpected sight in Katherine was Asian lady on a bike wearing a face mask and giant golf hat (pretty common in my experience, though perhaps without the bike), who then stopped by the bin I’d just walked passed for a good rummage around.
Got to the campsite outside Katherine with plenty of time for a run. Running in the afternoon sun, 34C and high humidity, while worried about snakes, crocodiles (ran to a river 2km away and back) and getting lost, wasn’t the easiest running experience, but certainly a memorable one.
In the morning we stopped at the rather lovely Katherine Hot Springs for a quick dip.