Before Darwin there is an other interesting NP: Litchfield. This park has several swimming spots, water falls and walking paths. An ideal target. On the way we made a brief stop in Pine Creek. This is still a (gold) mining town. It has old mining equipment proudy exibited in the town square. On the way back we camped in this town and found that most of the people in the local restaurant were mine workers. They probably also occupy most of the containers on the campsite. But I am getting a bit ahead of myself.

The road off the Stuart Hwy towards Litchfield NP goes through a town called Batchelor. The houses and town layout gave us very much the feeling af being back at the Shell camp in Brunei. There were even Elevated Timber Houses! And something which looked like the Panaga social club. We felt at home. A bit further the NP starts. After securing a spot at the nice shadow rich campsite we drove into the park, past a line of large anthills alligned North South, towards the first swimming hole, Buley Rockhole. Since it was a Saterday many locals were enjoying the cool water. After an hour or 2 there we did not have much energy left to dive to an other waterfall and climb down for a swim. Instead we walked to a lookout looking down to the waterfall and had a lovely view of the surrounding wooded country side.

During the night Rudy thought of the best sollution, for the time being, to the camper problem. It was either turn around now and drive 1.800 km back to Broome and miss out on the most interesting National Parks, or extend the rentel by 5 days.

He could only leave messages on answering machines or have fruitless conversations with a chatbot. The 24/7 service was unavailable till Monday morning. By that time we had already commited ourselves to the detour via Darwin to Kakadu and Katherine. The axienty of not nowing the future depressed the tour of Darwin . We had a lovely Asian meal at the local open market but after that not much more energy and only strolled a bit along the water front and past the modern government buildings.  The next day, while driving towards Kakadu we had several phone conversations with the rental company and just before we were out of (telstra) communication range they granted us the extension. Now we could relax again and fully enjoy the rock paintings at Ubirr and the next day at Burrungkuy. It was warm but we enjoy a bit of a cold breeze on top of the rocks and actualy shelter under them when a rain downpour came through. Just like the aboriginal had done for thousand of years when they made the paintings. Our spirits were so high that we even bought a painting in the local gallery in Jabiru. It will be sent to Holland.

Via a stopover in Pine Creek we reached the first waterfall of Nitmiluk NP (formerly Katherine). Some 20 km off the main road you reach an escarpment where the water falls down into several pools. The lower pool is large and a good place to swim. It is a pity that the adjacent NP campsite does not have any powered sites otherwise this would have been a good stopover point. Instead the local cafeteria was open and the iced coffee and carrot cake tasted great. Further down the road we entered the actual Gorge section of Nitmiluk. We arrived in time to book for the 2 o’clock boat tour into the gorge. 35 years ago we did it in kayaks but now we enjoyed the luxary of the cruise. By coincedence there was a group of 15 Dutch people joining as well. They were on a 28 day tour of Australia. The gorges follow the fracture pattern in the plateau. There are in total some 13 gorges, each time separated by a shallow section where the kayak has to be carried over. Our boat tour did only 2 gorges (ie boat 1, then 400 m walk to boat 2 and reverse). The deeper you go into the gorge system the narrower the gorge and the higher the gorge walls looked. It was a lovely afternoon (hot and humid) caped off with a swim at the campsite swimming pool. Normaly you would not like to stay here in high season. The allocated places are very tight. Build as a car park. Today there are only 2 other campers so place enough.