Torn

I'm torn between trying to finish up our tales of Oz and launching myself into a description of our time in York, but for today I'll go with Australia and see how I feel tomorrow.

When you ride The Ghan you don't just spend all day on the train. No sir! you have to get off and do excursions and in a way this is a good thing, although I for one wouldn't grumble about getting on the train in Darwin and not stirring off it until Adelaide. I can see that other people might not find it quite so attractive though.

 

So on day one our excursion was to Katherine Gorge or, as you're supposed to call it nowadays, Nimiluk. I was heard to mutter ungraciously that I would call it Nimiluk when everyone started referring to Edinburgh as Dunn Eadainn, but realistically that's  never going to happen, so I fell into line.

 

(This puts me in mind of a funny moment when we did a tour of New Zealand several years ago, and were solemnly assured that Dunedin was the New Zealand 'translation' of Edinburgh. I so wanted to point out that actually Edinburgh was the English translation of the  Dun Eadainn. But I didn't.)

 

Anyway, to Nimiluk. The OH and I had opted for a helicopter ride over the gorge. Generally I pass on the helicopter these days because they want to know your weight, but they didn't ask about that until we were actually sitting in the office waiting for our chopper to arrive, so I blithely took 10kg off my real weight for the purposes of filling in the form and we didn't come to grief, so that must have been alright then.

 

It was a most amazing trip. When I can bring myself to do it, I love riding in helicopters (not that I've done it all that often) and we got a much better view of the whole gorge system than if we had gone by boat - although that would have been fun too. We had the usual crocodile stories , despite being so high up in the air. By this time I was so over the whole crocodile thing I tuned out every sentence of the pilot's which included the word 'crocodile'. It didn't matter, the OH was up in the cockpit beside the pilot making technical conversation of sorts. I don't think they noticed I wasn't really following.

 

Photos? You bet.

 

 

It was only a little chopper!

 

The Gorge. Yes, there are boats down there on the river.

 

Interesting colouration at the top of the cliff

 Waterfall. well obvs! I'm a sucker for waterfalls.

 

Above and below - landscape between Darwin and Katherine.

 

 

The Visitor Centre in Katherine. Excellent displays of aborigine culture - and the air con was welcome too.

 

And back to the train. You can get some idea of just how long it is from this picture.

 

 

Next time it might be Alice Springs. Or it might be York. Who can say?