Katherine, NT.

 We are officially turning the corner and heading South now. After a few hours south we reach Katherine. We had a few places that would have been nice to stay at around this area, but we have the car booked in for a service at Toyota on Monday, so we chose to stay in town at the Riverview caravan park. It was a really nice little park, and just walking distance to the Hot Springs. We visited the Springs a few times and had a great time. The kids enjoyed paddling down the small creeks over the waterfalls.


The weather is still hot here, almost 40 degrees celcius every day, but no humidity which is nice. The caravan park also has a pool which the kids enjoyed. We visited the local rock man, at NT Rare Rocks and the kids bought some nice rocks with their pocket money. We also bought a very special egg made of rainbow sandsilt for one of our animal babysitters.


We visited Edith Falls and had a swim.


We spent Saturday afternoon playing by the low level weir with the locals. It was a beautiful shallow stretch of river so minimal risk of crocodiles and lots of people, especially kids so it was quite safe. The police came down at one point to check that nobody had any alcohol by the river,. They confiscated a few bottles of spirits - but we saw some locals hiding some coca cola bottles in the tress - we were guessing that it wasn't just coca cola.


It was AFL grand final night and the caravan park moved a big TV into the camp kitchen for guests to watch. We all enjoyed watching the first quarter, and then it was getting a bit late, so Kylie took the kids home to bed and listened on the radio. Go the Dees.


On the car service day, Kylie and the kids rode their bikes into town for a look around and then cooled off later that day with a walk down to the Springs.


The day after the car was serviced we were up early and ready for a big day driving as far as we could. It was still 38 degrees celcius so not really good for doing much other than driving or swimming. We stopped in at the Daly Waters Pub. It was a really fun eccentric place that we could easily spend more time in, and if it wasn't so hot we definitley would have stayed the night. Elsie enjoyed feeding the pub horse named Polly and making friends on the old helicopter.


We bought a cold drink and then kept driving, and ended up stopping for the night at the Devil's Marbels, which was a magical place to stay. However, Kylie did get a little hesitant after reading some of the cultural information boards that say how the aboriginal elders were saying that they do not camp near the rocks due to the strange things that the spirits do at night time. The dreamtime story says that the spirits kidnap children, and the family must sing special songs to make the spirits happy so they return the children. Sadly the special songs are getting lost in the new generations, so try to not upset the spirits.


The rocks look incredible with the golden sunset. We saw a snake on our way back from the lookout after dusk.

Sunrise was pretty nice too. Kylie woke up early to do the loop walk around the rocks and was greeted by a setting moon and a rising sun. 


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