Day 12: Darwin--And another boat!

Happy Northern Territories Day!

Today we drove about 4 hours to see the Katherine Gorge.  It is on the Katherine River and in the Nitmiluk National Park.  When the park service began to set up the park, the indigenous Jawoyn (Jah-win) people became very upset because they felt that this was their land.  They took the government people around and told them their names for everything,  showed them their sacred sites, etc. to show that they had a connection and valid claim to the land.  They agreed that the Jawoyn own the land and asked them to sign a 99-year lease to allow the park service to set up a national park there.  They are very respectful of the indigneous people and tell their stories and yield to their beliefs.  The name Nitmiluk is the Jawoyn name and means something about cicadas (the story was a bit winding and hard to get all of it).  The rivers in the area were named by an early white explorer and he named the rivers after his daughters, one of them being Katherine.  There is also a city called Katherine further down the road, but still along the river.

When we arrived, we went to the visitor's center because we had reserved a boat cruise (evidently the best way to see the gorge, because, well, it's a gorge).  We were booked for the 2-gorge cruise (there was also a 3-gorge cruise leaving right after ours).  When we arrived at the visitor center, then made our way to the boat docks, we found that the trees were full of bats--millions and millions of bats!  Some flying around, and they were huge!  Their wingspans were easily 3-4 feet across!  After our cruise, I asked what type of bats they were (ever the teacher!).  They were red flying fox and black flying fox.  On our way home, I looked them up and read to our group about them (no, really, they wanted to know!).  Randy, Joshua and I thought the bats were very cool--Kathi and Marian did not agree with us!

Yes, these are all bats!

Even the dots of black across the river are more bats

They were taking off in swarms

These type of bats are red flying squirrels and black flying squirrels.

While waiting for our boat, we met a family with four children.  They were on a year-long caravan tour of Australia.  One part isn't reachable by vehicle, so they rented tents and walked there to camp. They are from Canberra, so they are almost half-way around.  They are doing school with their three oldest (the youngest is in pre-school).  The oldest son's class is currently learning about the 10 wonders of Australia--he's seeing them!  What a great idea for families that can do it.  They wanted to do it now, while they are young and missing a year of school is easier to keep up with.  They also told us that today is Territories Day for the Northern Territories (it is the anniversary of the day in 1978 that they became self-governing) and that there would be fireworks tonight in Darwin at 7:30.  So we figured that if we left right after the boat cruise we could make it (since we'll be missing out independence day fireworks).

The gorge is very pretty, very scenic.  They talk as you go down the first gorge, then you have to get out and walk a short ways to get to the second gorge and the second boat.  There were people out canoeing--that would have been a lot of fun, but I don't think that Marian and Kathi would enjoy that!  And this way we could hear about what we were seeing.  We were encouraged to get up and walk around to take pictures.  They also had a container in the back to refill our water bottles and cups if we forgot to bring bottles.  We filled ours from a container at the visitor's center before we went out.

Old aboriginal drawings

Old, aboriginal drawings

clear water!

The white/gray areas are the actual color of the sandstone, the red areas soak up water like a sponge and the minerals inside are oxidizing.  The black areas are small waterfalls during the wet and the black is algae that grows on them.  

Cheeky boy!

After the boat tour, we hightailed it out, stopping for a short bite to eat in Katherine (the town).  As we got closer, maybe an hour or so out of the city, we started seeing multiple fireworks displays all around.  We also saw an area next to the road on fire.  This is their dry season and everything is very, very dry.  Our Google maps (we call her Florence, from Florence and the machine--changed to Florence in the machine) directed us to a dead end.  As we drove around Darwin trying to find the right beach, there were huge fireworks everywhere!  Two, one of them huge, went off in front of our car!  We saw three more fires--one was a large building engulfed in fire.  I looked up the Australian emergency number (for future reference, it is 000), but there were people at each fire already, so we could assume they were calling the fire department.  We decided that the city was too much like a war zone and drove back to our house (it was already 7:45).  We are staying in a small suburb.  As I type this, it is almost 10:00 and the continue to go off even around our neighborhood.  When we got out of the minivan, we went out into the street and we could see 7 different displays all around us.  We came in for ice cream, and it felt like we were in Bosnia or Beirut (though not as bad as those because they are definitely in danger).  It is constantly loud--both small and full-size fireworks going off within a block or two of us.  Hope we don't catch on fire!  We have metal siding and roofing, so we should be okay, but it 's still a bit scary.  We're not sure when we'll be able to sleep.  And I thought July 4th in the US was a pain!  As an ardent Democrat, I think they need more regulation of who can buy and set off some of these!  It is dangerous.  We feel like we're in a war zone.  Joshua looked up an online map of fires in the Northern Territory and there were tons of live fires (not controlled yet) all over Darwin, as well as the ones they had already controlled.  Yikes!

This is just a block away!