Nitmiluk River Cruise

We had been looking forward to canoeing up the Katherine river ever since reading about it in the Lonely planet guide, but it was not meant to be. Despite postponing our visit to the park by several days on the advice of the concessioners, they still weren't ready to begin renting the canoes and we were forced to take one of the large guided boat cruises. We took the half-day trip which departed after lunch and the views of the gorge were spectacular.




The river system is actually a series of gorges, separated by rock falls and sandbars, and at each obstacle we all had to unload from the boat, take a short walk, and load back up on another boat waiting on the other side. The cruise ultimately took us to the barrier between the third and fourth gorges, which meant we did the load/unload dance 6 times round trip. This would have been a considerable amount of portage, had we been in canoes.




Side streams cut down through the sides of the gorge to form little waterfalls. Wherever the walls of the gorge were less than vertical, small beaches had formed.






At the beginning of the 4th gorge, the swirling floodwaters of the Katherine River have eroded these deep circular holes in the sandstone.




This is an absolutely gorgeous Freshwater Crocodile on his way back into the river...





which wasn't too far from the beach where we stopped for a snack and a swim...




which in turn wasn't all that far from the Saltwater Croc Trap. The boat operators assured us that Salties rarely appeared in the gorge because they hated to crawl through the natural barrier of vegetation at the base of the first gorge, and that Freshies don't attack anything bigger than they can swallow whole, but there were still only 5 people in the group (including Darrin) brave enough to go for a swim.




We stuck around for dinner, hoping to do some spotlighting after dark. I've got vegetarian lasagne and a baked potato (2 starches, for some reason) on my plate, and the large, somewhat questionable looking dark things on Darrin's salad are sun-dried tomatoes.




Other than a Flying Fox, dozens of Agile Wallabies, and probably hundreds of Cane Toads, our spotlighting was fruitless, but we did get to enjoy a lovely sunset after dinner.