Katherine….’the crossroads’ Friday 13^th (ooooo scary) -18^th July

We find ourselves in Katherine again.  Being the crossroads for travels to the West, down South and into Kakadu it is a convenient place to stop.  I also have an assignment I need to complete (a week early mind you!) before we travel into ‘no receoption’ zones.  The kids and Mum are quite happy with the break from travelling and are familiar enough with Katherine for it too feel slightly homely.  The homely sensation was increased dramatically when I ran into Peter Dan in the book exchange/old railway station!  Running into someone we know from Phillip Island seems to be a constant occurrence for us now!  Moragh and Tarkyn were down at the market so I wandered down and said hello.  We arranged to meet up later in the day st the Katherine Hot Springs so Toli and Tarkyn could have a play.

We love these underwater shots...soo hard to get a good one

It was wonderful seeing Moragh, Tarkyn and Peter as I hadn’t seen them for quite some time. Ironically Moragh joined our bookclub just before I left so we will probably be seeing each other at least once a month when we get back home.  Moragh is friends with Ranger Steve from Kakadu so they were lucky enough to be staying with him at his ranger station in the Mary River region (south part of Kakadu).  This turned out to be incredibly lucky for us also as Steve invited us to stay with him when we journeyed to the amazing Kakadu in a few days time!!!!!!  I have been wanting to go to Kakadu for two decades and now days away from traveling there and we get invited to a Rangers station…..it was hard for me to grasp!

Movie night with the arty girls.  A fun bunch to hang with.

For the rest of our stay in Katherine the kids played with some other children in the tent behind us.  There were four girls (aged 2 to 13) who were all very chatty, booky and arty…perfect!  One of them was almost exactly a year below Bella in age and was also named Bella.  Here was where we were treated to the art of Crochet.  So hooked on a new thing we went and purchased Crochet needles.  Between Anne-Fleur – the all talented sewing, knitting, crocheting, tatting and drawing teenage wonder from Holland, our knitting book from home and Lauren , the crocheting double of Becky Hayward we were turning into quite the arty family.  We had to laugh when Toli, shivering after being in the water too long, stated “I just want to go home, curl up in my jumper with my needles and do some knitting”.  Ah the joys of travel.