Katherine

Rolled on to Katherine. Staying in a nice caravan park in a cabin, much to the boys relief.

Happy birthday to our gorgeous monkey. Jeepers you are getting big, too fast!

I think we forgot - you have to get rid of all your fruit and veg before crossing into WA. So it's a fruit platter for brekky, plus bacon and we forgot the eggs bit.

Went to the Cutta Cutta caves. The rocks were deposited here as sea creatures during the Cambrian times, about 570 million years ago. The limestone is from the shells etc of the sea creatures then - trilobites, weird cone shellfish, that kind of thing.

The name means "place of many stars" in Jawoyn language (pronounce Jawoyn just like "Darwin" but with a J).

The original creation stories have the bats carrying the stars out at night. Then they pack them away into the cave again when the sun comes up.

The carnivorous bats bring birds from outside at night to be eaten in the cave!

Also there is some kind of prawn living in the cave whose only near relative is in Madagascar, from Gondwanaland when all the continents were squished together as one.

We visited the hot springs of Katherine a couple of times. They are awesome, like a canal with rocks, just made for swimming, but clearly natural.

More swimming.

Went to the local art centre and voted in the Katherine art awards. Bought a hand woven Pandanus palm basket.

The guy on the left is made of rolled up paper - look closely; amazing!

Ended up staying one extra night since we got an email to re-register our car. Booked for the morning asap for the road worthy certificate.

Since we stayed another night, we saw "My Urrwai" by and starring Ghenia Gela. It's about her life as a kid in Rockhampton, and visiting where her parents are from: the Torres Straight Islands. She didn't fit in, there or on the mainland, came out to her family, who supported her. She learned the traditional dances. In the final part she sings and does some of the dance, explaining how they use a bow and arrow to hunt small birds in the grass. The boys liked it, us too.