We hit the road heading south towards our first stop. Katherine. This was a short hop only about 400 km's. Once out of Darwin the speed limit go's up to kph so 400k's go's pretty fast. Traffic was light and the scenery was spectacular. The speed limit was unlimited up until a few years ago but a rash of Japanese millionaires crashing their expensive Italian sports cars at high speed in the local version of the cannonball run put paid to that. Roads are really good and we had an excellent car. Our Nissan X-Trail was comfortable quiet economical and powerful enough for the trip.
The scenery slowly changes from tropical rainforest to tropical savannah slowly. On both side of the road there are huge ants nest (termites) that stand everywhere ike gravestones or ancient obelisks. On the side of the road there are tiny one starting everywhere. There are as solid as concrete. Don't Kick them. In the sky there are hundreds of birds of prey everything from small carrion hawks to peregrine falcons kites and the mighty Australian Wedgetail eagle, the largest australian eagle.
- Standing in front of the Xtrail with dad and my nieces before leaving.
- Termite Cathedral
- Field of Magnetic Termite Mounds
- The magnificent Wedge tail Eagle. They were endangered a few years ago but their population has really come back .
- Inflight
Katherine itself has two attractions. One the mighty Katherine Gorge which we will visit in the next installment and RAAF Tindal. Tindal is Australia's strategic forward airbase. A squadron of FA-18 Hornets are permanently based there. Quite often there is a detachment of F-16's from Singapore there for training. They pay us for big sky.
Yowie
