So I’m off into the wilderness again. Kakadu National Park, anyway. For a few nights of camping. Then I will check out Darwin and have to start peddling home to Perth as fast as I can.
The Katherine Gorge was lots of fun. There were some rough hikes down steep drops into the gorge, but you always had the option of a refreshing swim when you got there. Even though there were crocs around, the National Park people said it was safe for swimming if you followed a few guidelines and stayed clear of a few areas. Freshies, you see. I spent this morning kayaking up and down the river and taking lots of swims. It’s very hot and the sky is a very deep blue (like Perth in January)
As for wildlife, the wallabies at this place were all over the place. And way too tame. There are so many wallabies here that have been fed, unfortunately, by tourists, that they actually come and harrass you at your camp site. They come right up to you and beg for food while you are eating. At least they appeared to be, but maybe that had something to do with there normal stance as wallabies. The rangers warn you not to feed them, but they can get very aggressive. I was eating a banana at one point and threw the peel on the ground with the intension of picking it up when I was finished. A few wallabies in the area started twitching their noses when they cought a wiff of the fruit, and slowly started hopping towards me. I immediately put my foot with my big hiking boot on top of the peel, but one of the wallabies grabbed at a scrap of it that I failed to cover. He started angrily pulling on it in a tug-of-war with me until I finally gave up and just let him have it. He sat there stripping off thin little slices of the peel, eating it slowly while I sat just a few feet from him.
And then last night I could have sworn I saw a bunch of bats flying around. Sure enough, this morning I found hundreds of fruit bats hanging off a big tree in our campground, making a lot of noise and grooming themselves. It was an amazing sight.
