Katherine

Next stop Katherine where the van park is very close to another hot spring. This place turned out to be bigger than I expected but a desperate search for a McCafe was still unsuccessful and Red Rooster don’t do latte. Never mind.

The park is beautifully shady and has a freezing cold pool courtesy of shade cloth over the pool area. I think they should run the filtered water through some black poly pipe. If not then perhaps a defribulator to get your heart started again.

Once we had the van set and had had a cuppa, we headed out the back gate for the hot spring. First thing we ran into was the croc warning because the pool sits right by the Katherine River. I’ll include a photo of it. Kinda challenging in its own way. Once we got there we discovered it was heavily populated but seeing as it was Sunday, and hot, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Later in the week the nomads had the numbers and many hours were spent there until beer o’clock each afternoon.

Katherine has a lot of interesting history, much of which I didn’t know. It was bombed during WW2 and they were expecting the worst. Happily the Japanese didn’t invade although the old dear in the book exchange told me there were 2 groups of Japanese soldiers south of the place. I never know if these things are true or not. Rumour mills can be highly effective and totally inaccurate.

The other thing I didn’t remember seeing was their serious flood in ’98. When we first sailed into town I looked at the bridge which stands 18 meters above the surface and thought they were a bit optimistic with the 18 figure. Turns out they scored 22 meters which just about made the ceilings in the shopping center. What a mess. Their museum had some excellent info about the whole business.

Very interesting place but the afternoons are still Hot.

The photos all relate to the hot pools. Note they still need a good clean up after the wet season. The water is clean but the surrounds need the mud knocked off them.