Thursday 9 August – This morning we were up at about 7.15, and left the camp at around our usual time of 9am.  Grant rang an auto electrician in Katherine before we left and arranged to call in on him once we got to Katherine and see if he could do anything about our dodgy indicator.

            The drive from Cooinda to Pine Creek, where we rejoined the Stuart Highway was uneventful except for a sighting of a live, jumping wallaby, and the obvious change in scenery as we neared Katherine and the landscape became rockier.  We managed to find the auto electrician without the help of Zola, and after a short wait he came and had a fiddle with the indicator, reattached an earth that had come adrift, put a new (second hand) glass over the light, charged us a mere $20, and we were once again on the road heading to our camping ground Nitmiluk (aboriginal for Katherine Gorge).

This camping area we are in is situated right at the Gorge and is owned by the indigenous people.  It is quite an expensive one at $40 per night, but in one of the booklets we have collected along the way we had a discount voucher – so we can stay three nights and only pay for 2.  The caravan sites are very small and there isn’t too much distance between the vans.  There would be lucky to be two metres separating us from either of the vans each side of us, so of course we have Buckley’s chance of putting up our awning.  There were a couple of cute little wallabies hopping around the vans when Grant was cooking our meat for tea.

After we set up and had some lunch we went over to the pool (directly opposite our van) for a cool down.  I sat with my book while Grant headed straight in – complete with hearing aids!!  He realised after he dived in that he hadn’t taken them out, reached for his ears and discovered that one was there, but the other was somewhere in the not-so-small pool!  But of course both had been immersed in water – a real no-no.  the first I knew of it was when he came back to where we were sitting almost immediately, so we both got into the pool to look – both minus glasses, which made seeing anything almost impossible.

Well, to cut a long story short, within a few minutes we had a few people involved in the search, and after fifteen minutes a successful recovery of the said hearing aid, with the involvement of several people, goggles, snorkel and three duck diving searchers all doing their best to retrieve it.  Unfortunately, that one isn’t working – hopefully it can be repaired, but the other one, only having had a mini dip, works fine.

We have booked a two hour cruise of the first two gorges tomorrow morning at 9am.  Nitmiluk comprises thirteen gorges, with three being readily accessible.  There are also a couple of walks we can do here, but we won’t make any rash decisions about doing any testing walks until we see how hot it is when the time comes.