Winter Holiday July 2012: MATARANKA TO KATHERINE

The trip to Katherine was uneventful.   We stayed in the Shady Lane Tourist Park for two days as the weather was so hot and we needed to run the airconditioner.  This caravan park was quite good and shady and we would certainly stay there again.   Katherine is a reasonably large town with all the essential services and shops.    We were desperately short of groceries so did a big shop at Woolworths to stock up again.   There were a lot of natives in the town but did not cause us any trouble.   Because of the problems caused by liquor with the natives no takeaway liquor is able to be purchased until 2pm until 6pm and you could see a lot of natives hanging around the bottle shops about 2pm waiting for them to open.
On Saturday we went to the local markets, they were quite good with many stalls selling cooked and fresh food. We bought some frozen mango for Bob to eat.    These markets are on every Saturday morning and a lot of the locals were eating there.
We then went on to Edith Falls which are 66km from Katherine.   These are in the Nitmiluk National Park and you are able to camp there.    The falls were quite small but you were able to swim in the plunge pool at the base of the falls. We did not do this as the water was quite cold.
After lunch we went to the Katherine Hot Springs that were only 500mts. from the back of our caravan park.   These were lovely to soak and swim in and were very popular with the kids in town.
It was so good we stayed there a good hour and a half.
On Sunday morning we headed for Darwin.