I’ve hurt my back. I have absolutely no idea what I’ve done, but I have a half-formulated theory that it is MBW’s fault.
I mean, she is always on my back about something.
But seriously, I don’t know what I’ve done to it. We store a lot of stuff under the bed, so we are always lifting the bed up to get something out. Like the coffee machine.
While the bed isn’t heavy – it is hinged – if you lift it badly you could risk hurting yourself.
Or maybe it’s just symptomatic of having too many days sitting in Elsie driving long distances, and I’ve stiffened up.
Or maybe I’m getting old.
Or maybe I just have a design defect, which I suspect is well and truly out of warranty by now.
In any case, I’m in a bit of discomfort. Discomfort that is bordering on pain. I might need some Asprin 🙁
We rolled into Katherine yesterday. I think I’ve already told you about the hot springs and dinner. And the groceries.
And the retail therapy for MBW, such as it was. I probably didn’t tell you about the number of locals (if you know what I mean) walking around with a slab of VB under their arm. I thought that alcohol was tightly regulated in the NT?
Another beautiful sunset over the park last night.
One of the good things about staying in a caravan park (or somewhere that loosely resembles a caravan park) is that they have facilities. Remember a few nights ago we stayed in Julia Creek and we needed to be fully self-contained – no facilities.
But the Katherine Farmstay has power and water hookup, and it also has facilities.
It is great that we have shower and toilet in Percy, but there are some things that are not allowed in our toilet – except for the gravest of emergencies, of course – and with a small hot water system, you are limited to quick showers.
And a quick shower means turn it on, get wet, turn it off, lather up, turn it back on, rinse, turn it off, wash your hair … I’m sure you understand the process.
But it is a necessary process.
Yes, a first world problem I agree, but a problem nevertheless.
But the Katherine Farmstay has facilities. So last night was the opportunity to head over the men’s shower block and luxuriate in a long, hot, steaming shower.
A full service experience, if you will.
Except it wasn’t.
Firstly, the change area and clothes hanging space is the same space as the bit where you stand and have your shower. No separation, no door, no shower screen.
Nothing.
Which means – potentially – that standing in the shower gives your clothes an unexpected wash at the same time.
Potentially.
In practice though, the water only trickled out of the shower head. The water “presure” was so poor, that I have spelled the word with only one “s”. That’s all that it deserves because it didn’t come out with a satisfying “ssssssss” sound like you would expect.
It was more of a “s”.
But it was a shower, and my clothes weren’t getting wet, except …
It only had two possible temperatures: scalding hot, and not hot at all.
So the luxuriating shower experience turned out to be a total fizzer. A bust. Tonight I’m going to luxuriate in Percy.
Last night we booked tickets for a cruise through the Katherine Gorge. I won’t say how much it was, but let’s just say that the boys will be getting less inheritance one day than they were possibly expecting. About $400 less.
Oops!
Last night we did something horrible. Worse than spending money on a gorge tour.
We had to set the alarm. Yikes!
I was hoping never to set an alarm again in my life, but alas, we needed to be at the boat jetty around 15 minutes before the 9.00am departure, which meant that we needed to be up and starting ablutions around 7.00am.
We got to the appointed departure location around 8.45am – right on time, and dutifully lined up with about 50-60 other people. The nice lady from the tour company was walking up the line, asking for everybody’s names so she could cross them off the list.
The bloke in front of us was asked his name, and he looked at the list of names and announced that he was ”Geoff Taylor”.
Whoa, whoa, whoa!
There is only ONE Geoff Taylor on this cruise today buddy, so don’t try to steal my seat!
Well … it appears that there are, in fact, two Geoff Taylors on the 9.00am cruise today. What are the chances?
We did the 3 gorge/4 hour tour which was a little more expensive that the 2 gorge/2 hour tour, but included snacks, drinks, and a swim.
It was a fabulous day. The gorge is the traditional land of the Jawoyn people and our tour guide (and stand-up comedian) Russell said that he is a proud Jawoyn man.
He said that the Jawoyn people like to share the good things that they have with people of other cultures, beliefs and races.
We saw 3 gorges, and needed to swap boats each time we changed gorges because they cannot navigate the rocks between each gorge. So they take several boats up to each individual gorge in the wet season (when the water is much higher), and then in dry season (like it is now), we need to walk between gorges and change boats each time.
Now, just to warn you, I took about 2,000 photos of the gorge … and not a single one of them does any justice for the beauty, serenity, and splendour of the gorge.
I can see why it is a special and sacred place for the Jawoyn people.
We had as swim in the waterhole and it was very … refreshing (aka cold). After our swim, most people were keen to get out of their wet things and get back into dry clothes.
I had the (mis)fortune of seeing TOGT (The Other Geoff Taylor) in his budgie smugglers, and it wasn’t quite the enlightening experience that I’d hoped it could be. I’m sure that if he’d seen me in mine, he would have been impressed.
Or jealous.
It’s hard to tell how smart people really are. There was a couple on our cruise who had matching shirts and binoculars, and carried a book of birds, and they spent their time birdspotting.
Another guy with an American accent was telling the bird people that he’d written a book on orchids.
But the most interesting comment that I heard was as we boarded the boat to travel back down gorge #3 on our way home after our swim. A bloke and his wife were getting on ahead of us and he said to his wife, “we sat on the left side of the boat each time coming up the gorges. Let’s sit on the right side of the boats heading back for a different perspective …”.
Now I might be as dumb as a box of rocks, but I’m pretty sure that whatever he saw on the left going up, will be the same as he sees on the right side of the boat going back. Am I right? Or is he a genius who is clearly far smarter than me?
We also saw some fresh-water crocodiles and some goannas that were flat out like a lizard drinking.
Here’s a fun fact. Fresh-water crocodiles have small, narrow snouts and small teeth, while salties have a wider snout and stronger teeth. Freshies will not attack unless provoked, but salties will attack for food.
That means that if you fall out of the boat and a crocodile is swimming towards you, it is a salty.
Handy to know. And you don’t need to be a fast swimmer to outswim a crocodile, you just need to be faster than at least one other person.
By the time we got back to Elsie, it was close to 2.30pm and Elsie’s temperature gauge said it was 34 degrees outside … and it certainly felt like it.
We had a lovely, unexpected call from one of our 4 very favourite little people this afternoon – Elias will be 3 years old in August and we wanted to FaceTime with Grammy and Grandpa … so we had a lovely chat and caught up on all the news.
It turns out that his parents (our son and daughter-in-law) are thinking about cutting out his daytime sleep, which is funny really … because I have started to re-introduce my afternoon nap.
I mentioned the other day that MBW being sick before we left meant that we left some stuff behind, like a mat that we put down outside the van to keep dust down.
We stopped at a little camping shop on the way home from the gorge to see if they had anything suitable. While they did have some options, they were hideously overpriced, and we weren’t that desperate.
There is another camping shop in Katherine called “Rod and Rifle”, so maybe I’ll stop in there tomorrow. I might even be able to pick up a nice double-barrelled shotgun for MBW for her birthday in July.
Back to Percy and it was Cheese O’Clock (we’d missed lunch by this time), and a few loads of washing, so we went over to the animal feeding at 3.30.
MBW bravely held a snake and we looked at all the other animals on the farm. I even fed a cow a piece of bread by holding the bread between my teeth, and the cow took it from me.
All I can say is that there was far too much tongue and drool for my liking, and I will be having a long, luxuriating shower tonight to get myself clean again.
I’m feeling a bit violated!
Tomorrow we are still in Katherine, but heading over to a different free campsite for the night. We will be seeing the Katherine Outback Experience in the morning, then a concert of local artists in the evening.
But – as usual – you will hear all about that tomorrow.
Ciao
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