Katherine Gorge

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Back on the train for more meals and a night of good sleep this time.  On Tuesday morning we stopped at the little town of Katherine for several hours.  We took a boat tour of the Katherine Gorge, which has some very impressive scenery. 

This is the town of Katherine.  Pretty sleepy, but like all the Australian towns we have seen, it is clean and pleasant.

This is the postcard view up into the narrow end of the first gorge.  The boat tour was a nice way to spend the afternoon.

This is pretty typical of the terrain along the gorge.

This is the highest cliff in the gorge.  Of course there is a romantic story attached to it.  I don't remember it, but if you've heard any romantic cliff story, you can make it up.

The way the tour works is that you take a flat-bottomed boat similar to this one up through the first gorge, dock, and walk along a rocky path to the start of the second gorge.  Then you board a second boat for a tour of the second gorge.

I took this along the path between gorges.  It was rugged and lovely.

This is the second gorge.

The trees in the water are the end of the navigable portion of the second gorge.

This monument is in the area surrounding Katherine and honors the stockmen who were such an important part of local history.

We were back on the train in time for lunch.  Food on the train was pretty good--big meals with names like the Ploughman’s Lunch or the Stockman's Dinner, but you don't come to Australia for the food, do you?

We arrived in Darwin in the afternoon, and disembarked from the Ghan.  It was a nice trip, and I very much enjoyed our excursion through the center of Australia.

Come back tomorrow for a tour of Darwin.