Karlukarlu to Nitmiluk

From Karlukarlu, we shot straight north up the Stuart highway through Tennant Creek, Three-ways, to Mataranka where we stayed overnight at a wonderful campsite with beautiful thermal pools. Before even the crack of dawn the following day, I was awoken and soon to witness a most amazing flying-red-fox (bats) pre-dawn-cacophony-of-frenzied activity (the picture cannot even capture this amazing sight of hundred-of-thousands of bats streaming through the sky at incredible speeds, just as the day broke…IT WAS INCREDIBLE!! I’ve never seen or heard anything like it!

After the sun fully started her long-day, Laurie and I went for a quick canoe along the river where we again spotted huge numbers of these flying red foxes, just hanging-out:

Laurie, the engine


Wanna hang-out?

From mataranka, we headed towards Katherine where we were planning to stay at the Nitmiluk Gorge. On the way, we stopped at Cuttacutta Caves where aside from the amazing caves and display of stalagmites/tites, I got to see my first live Aussie

snake!!!

The Red-banded tree snake:




Amazing ceilings and floors of stalagmites and stalagtites:









And finally, we finished our tour with the sight of a gorgeous green-spotted moth:

Our destination this day was the Nitmiluk Gorge where we were to go on a beautiful gorge-boat-tour…but first, we had to dash in for a quick beer-stop at the Daly Waters Pub (one of Laurie favorite spots and one of the oldest, with quite the “wildest” pub reputations on the Stuart Highway):




and during the peak-heat of the day, we made it to Nitmiluk where my close-encounters with true Aussie wild-life was just about to begin!!!

A blue-eyed Honeyeater, the peskiest bird EVER!, kept trying to steal our trash and even was ballsy enough to eat Laurie’s bread right through the plastic IN the campervan while Laurie was napping that afternoon!!! I fought and fought and fought with this bird until, of course, I gave up and he (the king of his domain) won the battle:





As we waited for our tour to begin, we watched a most graphic nature-show-in-the-raw as a golden-tree-snake devoured a little frog:

The gorge consisted of three gorges and because we are at the end of the dry-season, the water levels were quite low, requiring us to get on and off three different boats.

The second gorge:

where we also go to see (more) aboriginal rock-art (I LOVE IT!!!). From what the guide told us, this is art is 7 thousand years old!?!?! (though I don’t believe OZ had rabbits back them as they were an introduced species—so I’m guessing I was having auditory-hallucinations at that point, as it was HOOOOOOOOTTTT!!!):

This is the famous view of the third gorge:





And here is just a token photo of me on the boat after I singed the skin off my arse from sitting down on that aluminum step thinking it would be a great place to sit-my-arse-down-for-a-photo! The boat had only been baking in the sun for the last 4 hours!!! Ahhhh…silly me!!!


A side note: my friend KIM in portland has started a great FREE clothing exchange for petite women, please check out her site if you have the time or if you are in the OR area as you might find yourself some great clothes-->http://pdxpetite.com/

cheers, FUJ
I am only laughing because 40 pairs of eyes were staring at me as I jumped up with the most pained look on my face, unable to hold back a: sssshiiiiittt that’s HOT!