Thursday, September 13, 2007

Great Outdoors: Katherine

With the booming economy, the Adelaide to Darwin rail and Tiger Airways spreading it wings around Asia, so too have the tourism numbers increase. Whenever the Dry season approaches the Southerners escape the winter chills to come up to Darwin for its crisp cool weather. But with this Dry Season, I noticed that there was also a large number of Taiwanese backpackers. Here's a group which I got to know. Without the new working/tourist visa and Tiget Airways they would not have contemplated backpacking. A sad fact of a Asian working system is that you can never expect to ask for 6 months leave and still expect your job to be there when you get back. Many of these girls gave up their jobs in order to travel. Good thing for me is that I get a free holiday as well. My contribution: the car (obviously with me in it). This time, we drove to Katherine (3 hours from Darwin) to kayak up the gorge.

Here's Edith Falls our first night campsite. After a short hike you get to a nice big waterfall swimhole..Second day, we drove to Katherine to begin our kayak up the gorges. Katherine has 12-13 gorges (I think). The hardest part was not the kayak rather the carry of the kayaks over the gorges which separates the river... Thats me being sun-smart.

Am sure Sis would love the adventure and so would no 1 and 2. Not sure how I'd get no. 3 over though.
And thats how I busted my watch.