We spent two nights in a caravan park in Katherine and it reiterated again why we don't stay in caravan parks. We thought fantastic, we got an en-suite site with our own hot shower and a shady site, but that's about all we got. We had been put next to the workers' cabins and they didn't shut up all night, even after repeated requests. We complained to reception, they apologised but nothing was done. After two very sleepless nights and still no battery, we adjourned to Copperfield Dam, near Pine Creek, to wait out the weekend. We initially planned on staying at Umbrawarra Gorge but the trek to the gorge put us off staying when we could camp right near the dam and go swimming. Which we did, at least a few times a day.
We returned to Katherine on Tuesday, assured that our battery should be in by then and to get the brakes serviced on the camper. We went grocery shopping and found that the 2lt Streets Double Chocolate icecream was on special so we indulged ourselves. We don't have a freezer so we indulged further by sitting in the park with our spoons and devoured the whole creamy lot.
Our battery wasn't in so rather than stay in Katherine any longer we bought a cranking battery from Toyota instead of the deep cycle/cranking battery that Geoff wanted to get. We also bought a bird book for Erin as she has been trying to identify all the birds we see. While Geoff was running around trying to source another battery, Erin and I sat in Katherine Hot Springs, relaxing. Tough life isn't it?
When we left Katherine we had psyched ourselves up for camping for a week in Gregory NP staying at Limestone Gorge and were looking forward to it. We had left Katherine a little late in the day so we stayed at Limestone Creek overnight stop on the way to get an early start to Gregory. We stopped for a look at Victoria River Roadhouse and the Durack monument, then had a picnic lunch at Timber Creek before returning to Bullita Access Road to go to the gorge. To our dismay, the gorge was closed due to flood damage and no camping allowed. The rest of the park was open to camping but this was the only camp site with swimming, the remaining having crocs or no swimming holes. This was the third thing we'd found closed today, the first two were Joe's Creek Walk and Kuwang Lookout, both supposed to be pretty spectacular.
