Katherine

The tourist brochures differ on the population of this service town, it is between 5,500-11,000.

We stayed at Shady Lane – 8 minutes from Katherine on the road to the Katherine Gorge.

I am pleased we did not stay in Katherine, especially on a Thursday-it is extremely busy-benefit day! Dogs roam the township of Katherine and I did not feel safe. There is only 1 supermarket and it is packed, we queued for 35 minutes to buy our groceries. You have to wait until 2pm to buy alcohol. ID is required to buy port and it is limited to 1 bottle each.

We did the ‘touristy’ trip – 3 gorge boat cruise at $91 each – what a rip off! It was only worth the child’s price of $46.00. 3 hours on a flat bottom boat cruising along looking at cliffs. The highlite for me was spotting crocodiles.

On Friday 22^nd we head to Kakadu – many call it Kakadon’t, but we are here now, so feel we should have a look. Once again another cost - $25 each to enter the National Park and this permit is valid for 14 days. Plus there is some paid and some free camping along the way, plus many paid touristy things to do like flights, boat cruises etc.

Watch out for our next report… in 2-3 weeks…