Darwin to Uluru (Ayres Rock)

[Yowie]

Part three Darwin to Uluru....
Sorry for the delay in the next episode, but now i have a nice Sunday afternoon off with cricket on the radio......
We left Darwin about lunchtime in a virtually new Nissan Xtrail heading south towards our first stop Katherine. Katherine is about a four hour drive, and is famous for the beautiful Katherine Gorge, Tindal Airforce base and F all else.
Up until about five years ago the Stuart Highway (Darwin to Adelaide) was an unlimited speed highway, but the fun police limited it to 130 kph when too many Japanese business men piled their Ferrari's and Lamborghini's into trees and sand dunes in the middle of nowhere (not to mention all the Aussies in their hotted up V8's). The scenery is astonishing for the first hour it is almost rainforest and nothing else, then it flattens out and there are fields of massive termite mounds....

Termite Cathedral (Wikipedia)

Field of Mounds (Wikipedia)

These are all over the territory. Baby ones are on the side of the road, you have to be really careful pulling over as they are harder than cement.
Again like Darwin there are many WW2 historic sites along the way, lots of old airfields and camps. There is not much to see nowadays, but one of my fathers friends did a similar trip in the late 50's and said the airfields were full of old bombers and fighters just abandoned at the end of the war. All i saw were a few old fuel tanks .
All these sites may seem strange but you have to remember there were over half a million US service men stationed along this road during the war. Must have been a hardship station, stinking hot and wet in summer and freezing cold in the southern parts during nights in winter.

After 4 hours at 130 kph we hit Katherine. I don't have any photo's to post of the town because I have none. There was nothing to see, the highlight of the town was the saleyards and the best restaurant was Subway . We booked into our hotel and for a breakfast tour of the gorge and turned in after a long day.

This is what it is all about......

Bacon Eggs and dawn in Katherine Gorge

Katherine Gorge actually contains 13 separate gorges. Our tour went up two of them. four of the gorges are fairly easily accesible, where as the others are for the very intrepid or best seen via helicopter.

Full Light, there are crocs out there

There are Crocs out there but mostly only freshwater ones, Salties do get up here in the wet season, but to save tourist lives they are trapped and sent back home. Apparently they find a four or 5 metre Saltie up int the fourth gorge every year after the wet. The chase the barramundi up the gorge then get trapped when the water drops.
Freshwater crocs are mostly harmless being very timid and even if they do bite they have very fragile teeth that shatter (apparently not going to test that theory myself )
To get to the second gorge you have to walk a short traverse...

Not a bad place for an early morning walk

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The further you go up the gorge the better it gets....

This corner is sarced to the local Aborigines. It is over 100ft deep and is said to be the resting place of the Rainbow Serpent of the Dreamtime

This was the reson i wanted to do this trip. Australia is full of places like this. If you look closely at some of the photo's you may see the high water mark of the 2006 floods. We were told by our guide that at the height of the flood, enough fresh water was flowing through the gorge to fill Sydney harbour every nine minutes. (google earth sydney harbour to see how big it is)
Next time Daly Waters, Tennant Creek and Alice Springs

[housil]

Thx for the pics and review. It´s a too beautiful place.