A Gorge-ous Day

My last day in the Northern Territory was a long one, but splendid. It started with an all-day climb/swim/boat up Katherine Gorge and ended with boarding a bus after midnight and heading for Western Australia.

Katherine Gorge, also known as Nitmiluk, is owned by the Jawoyn people, the same people whose corroboree I’d had the pleasure of attending the night before. Our guide for what would be an adventurous nine-hour excursion had been the narrator during the story dances at the corroboree.

Because the Katherine River followed fault lines as it carved down through the sandstone escarpment, the gorge is actually divided into 13 sections, each of which is generally referred to as a numerical gorge — first gorge, second gorge, etc. Most folks only make it through the first two gorges, because not everyone wants to spend nine hours hiking over wildly fractured rock in 100 degree heat. But for those who have the time and energy, the gorge repays one with increasingly glorious scenery.

I will admit that in looking back at my photos, I’m amazed that I made it over some of the rock barriers in the gorge, especially in light of the fact that I was carrying most of my camera equipment with me.

The photos below are of the splendid red wall of Jedda Rock in the second gorge, and of the wild and weirdly worn rocks we had to clamber over to get to the sixth gorge. The rocks are, I think, self-explanatory—it was a difficult scramble. But Jedda Rock is more than just a lovely bit of scenery on the river.

Jedda, made in the 1950s, was the first movie to feature Aborigines in leading roles and to attempt to explore cultural differences (though pretty much just from a colonial perspective). The climactic scene of the movie involved the heroine, Jedda, plunging to her death off of this rock. Here you can see some still images from the movie. The movie was filmed in this area, but the story gets hazy here. Some say the fatal fall was filmed from this rock but was later reshot in New South Wales. Others suggest that, as the fall would be too dangerous, New South Wales was the only place the fall was filmed. Either way, the actors started out on top of this rock—and you can recognize the terrain of the gorge in the film stills. Either way, Jedda Rock is a good example of the beauty enjoyed during a cruise of Katherine/Nitmiluk Gorge.

Elsey Station

Not far from the thermal pool is the site of the old Elsey Station, a sprawling cattle station carved out of the wilderness. This was the home of Jeannie and Aeneas Gunn at the beginning of the 20th century. It was at that time an incredibly remote location, and Jeannie Gunn was in fact the first white woman to reach the area.

Jeannie Gunn, who is actually more widely known as Mrs. Aeneas Gunn, as that is the name under which she published, kept diaries of life among the men and Aborigines who occupied the region. She eventually turned her writings about the hard but happy life on the edge of nowhere into the book We of the Never-Never, now considered one of the classics of Australian literature. And it’s a great read. We of the Never-Never has also been made into a wonderful movie.

The title of the book and movie are taken from the Aboriginal term for the really remote areas of the Outback: nulla-nulla, translated as never-never. As Jeannie Gunn wrote, it was “away Behind the Back of Beyond, the Land of the Never-Never; in that elusive land with an elusive name—a land of dangers and hardships and privations, yet loved as few lands are loved—a land that bewitches her people with strange spells and mysteries….We who have lived in it, and loved it, and left it, know that our hearts can Never-Never rest away from it.”

If you have not read the book or seen the movie, I recommend both highly.

At Elsey, I saw the graves of many of those I knew from the book, including that of Aeneas Gunn (shown below), who died far too young.

Mataranka

Contrast always makes things more interesting. For example, when I visited Iceland, despite a light snow, we could go swimming, because there are geothermally heated springs. At Mataranka, the contrast is crisp and bleak vs. wet and lush—and the contrast is just as striking as the cold vs. hot of Iceland.

Every day, several million gallons of water flow out of the deep thermal spring at Mataranka. The clear water emerges at about 95 degrees Fahrenheit, but cools slightly as it flows through the shade of the lush vegetation the spring makes possible.

Below, the first photo is the area across which we hiked to get to the oasis at Mataranka. Not very promising. The second photo is of the pool created by the spring. The contrast is pretty astonishing—more so when you didn’t know what to expect, and just changed into a swimsuit because you were told you should.

The pool is just a widening of the stream, and the water flows out at the far end, over a little waterfall. The water really is as blue and clear as it looks in the photo—and it’s wonderful to take a dip on a hot day.

Darwin’s Courthouse and Police Station

After Aquascene, Judy and I headed off for a brief walking tour of Darwin, before we had to catch our bus to Katherine. I acted as tour guide, having been around the town the day before. On foot, I was able to get photos of some sites I’d passed by bus previously, and among the things I photographed were the Court House and Police Station, which stand side by side. These are the stone buildings, erected in 1872, which replaced earlier buildings that had been consumed by termites. The buildings (shown below) are classic Aussie Colonial, with local rock construction, wide verandas, and steep iron roofs (the verandas and high roofs help with the heat). And then it was on the bus, and we were heading south.

Pandanus spiralis

Pandanus is a genus of plants common to tropical Asia and Australia. There are about 650 species, most of which have a lot of stilt roots that help support the slender trunks. Pandanus tends to grow near water, either along coastlines or in marshy or wetland areas. (That was a clump of pandanus in the middle of the photo of Yellow Water Lagoon.)

Pandanus has long, narrow, palm-like leaves that are used extensively in most tropical areas, for weaving hats, baskets, mats, and even small sails, rope, and even wrapping foods for cooking. (If you’ve been to Thailand, you’ve probably enjoyed more than one dish cooked in pandanus leaves.)

Pandanus is also sometimes called screw palm or screw pine (I can only imagine that the “pine” appellation came after someone saw the somewhat cone-like fruit—because pandanus itself does not look at all like pine).

Traveling around the Top End, both in Kakadu and later in Darwin, I was delighted by the spiraling leaf patterns that give the screw palm its common name—most distinctly seen in the Pandanus spiralis. The leaves spiral up the trunk as the tree grows. In the wild, this leads to a leafy corkscrew. But in gardens, where the long pandanus fronds may be trimmed (as in the photo below), it is sometimes easier to discern the spiral pattern.

Aquascene

After the adventures in Kakadu, I spent a couple of days in Darwin. One of the sights I had been told was a “must see” was Aquascene at Doctors Gully. Decades ago, someone started feeding the fish at this spot, and today, at high tide, fish show up in the hundreds for free food. However, today, it’s not just one person, but rather clusters of tourists who get packs of bread with their entry fee, and get to wade out among the swirling fish. Mullet, sea bream, catfish, herring, and more crowd water as shallow as they dare, eager for the handouts. Watching little kids interact with the fish is particularly fun.

In the images below, children often stay to the ramp, as the competition among the fish (as seen in the second photo) can get pretty intense. (The fish won’t hurt you, and wading into the water and having them swirl around your legs can be a really interesting, if odd, experience—but some of the fish are large, and they could easily knock a tot over.)

Water Buffalo

The water buffalo found in the northern part of Australia are impressive and fascinating, but they are not indigenous—and they are, in fact, something of a menace. Introduced into Australia in the 1800s as work animals and as a way to supply milk and meat to settlers in remote, northern settlements, these heat-tolerant mammals from Asia went feral when settlements failed or were abandoned. The now-wild buffalo multiplied to a point where they began to present serious problems.

First, they trashed the local ecology. They trampled shorelines, destroyed bird-breeding areas, and generally demolished delicate ecosystems. Second big problem is that they carry diseases that both indigenous animals and domestic cattle could catch. So they aren’t popular.

On top of that, they can be dangerous. In Crocodile Dundee, Paul Hogan’s character was able to hypnotize a massive buffalo that blocked his path, but this is not how they normally react to humans. While they might run away, they might not. They can weigh up to 3/4 of a ton, and their horns can measure ten feet from tip to tip—so if they decide to attack, you’re in trouble. And even if they just step out in front your car as you’re driving down the road, you’re not going to survive slamming into a 1,500-pound wall of muscle.

Efforts to reduce the number of feral water buffalo in the Top End have been successful, but the Australian Park Service must remain vigilant, so the numbers don’t rebound. However, though numbers are reduced, you can still see an occasional water buffalo in the wilder regions of Australia’s north.