Gerbie on tour 36

[gerbie]

Water

The next part of my journey the central theme turned out to be water. I used Darwin as the starting point for a visit to two lovely national parks, Litchfield and Kakadu. With the rainseason just gone, this time of the year supposingliy is the best time to visit them. Unfortunately some parts were still inaccesible or only reachable with a four wheel drive, but in the end there was still plenty to see, mainly waterfalls. After a couple of days I had to conclude that I can't confirm the overenthousiastic responses of most fellow travellers. Not that it wasn't worth the visit, but after a few falls, one has seen them all I guess. Possibly I have seen to many of them anyway, after visiting Mexico, Venezuela and New Zeeland earlier this journey.

The highlight for me in the tropical northern part of the country was canooing in the Nitmiluk gorge, near Katherine. Almost no current, beautiful sunny weather, spectacular rock formations and two days of pain in my shoulders sums up an unique experience.

After a couple of days driving plenty of miles, I arrived in Broome on the west coast. Not really worth mentioning on itself, but just two days of quietness in a busy schedule. Time to sit down with a good book. The beach was nice, the sunset fairly early, but beautiful to see. And as Broome is on the Indian Ocean, I can now claim to have seen sunsets at all oceans.

I heard several positive notions and read some as well about the Ningaloo reef, so that had to be my next stop. The Great barrier reef had been scratched out of my itinerary earlier, but rumor has it this reef is even more spectacular. As diving was never and will never be my thing (my ususal excuse is that I panic as soon as I close my eyes in the shower), I refuged to snorkeling. Something I hadn't done since the swimming lessons during primary school (though back then I wasn't really good at it). But I am very chuffed that I did try, as it turned out to be an unforgettable experience. Standing on the beach the ocean already looks very nice, but you discover a whole new world as soon as you put on the mask and look under the surface of the water. Only a few meters away from the shore several beautiful corals can be found, with as an added bonus hundreds of fish, dozens of different varieties in an uncountable number of different colours. As a non-swimmer I had never anticipated it would impress me this much. I do understand the enthusiasm about diving now as well, even though I will never experience it myself.

Finally I have paid a visit to the Shark bay area, even though contrary to what the name makes you believe, I didn't see any sharks. I did see an old telegraph station though, some stromatolites (quiz question: what are they? answers can be mailed to gerbie7@hotmail.com) and dolphins as well. These animals come to the coastline every day as they know they will be fed. In my opinion they're not really wild then, but it remains a fascinating sight to stand in the sea with the water until over your ankles, with a dolphin swimming past you at only a meter's distance, waiting to be fed by one of the spectators a bit later.

Water was the word. On the roads in the north, where instead of bridges the roads get lowered to go through the creeks, and even though most of those creeks are empty, sometimes you've got to drive straight through the stream to be able to continue your direction. Water falling from the air, rain for the first time in ages, exactly the moment my windscreenwipers chose to stop their job. And in between the edge of the desert, where you are advised to take your own water, as the next 632 kilometer are extremely dry.

Next time the last bit of Australia, Perth and the south western part of Western Australia. For this time, hail,

Gerben

Comments

[jeroen.livejournal.com]

you are such a lucky guy to experience all that, I always love your stories!

Re:

[gerbie.livejournal.com]

Thanx, I like writing them, though it's always better to know that people are really reading them.