In Katherine we turned right and headed west (well actually, west/south/west), we were on our way to WA, the largest state in Australia. It was pretty ordinary Aussie countryside for the first 200 kms or so until we came into the Judbarra Gregory National Park and the landscape started to turn into rugged cliffs and escarpments all around and funny pointy hills with an outcrop of rocks at the very tip. As we got right into the park before and after Victoria River Roadhouse it started to very much resemble the Blue Mountains type cliffs and precipices except it didn't have the blue tinge. It then flattened out a bit as we drew nearer to our night's stopover, Timber Creek.
We don't usually drive this far in a day, but we sort of had no choice because the night stop overs are not that close as they are in more populated places of Australia. So we arrived at about 4:30pm at the caravan park and had a serendipity thrown in with the price of the caravan park.
[To back-track - when we went on the Katherine Gorge Cruise we were told that we would most likely see fresh water crocs - we didn't. Then on the Yellow River Cruise we missed out again (only salt water ones). In several of the plunge pools at the bottom of the water falls there were freshies, but we didn't ever see any.]
So to the serendipity - right here in the caravan park at Timber Creek at 5:00pm each day they have a Fresh Water Crocodile feeding in the creek behind the park - for free. So we parked our van and hurried down the back, onto a small bridge going over the creek and right under our feet in the water were five fresh water crocodiles - really close up. When the lady came with the food she told us all not to hang anything below the bridge as these crocs can be aggressive at feeding time.
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| Fresh Water Croc smiling. |
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| Freshie at Timber Creek |
One guy decided to get a bit too close with his camera and the big male croc actually jumped up at him about half its body length out of the water - it didn't faze him and he stayed there until the lady in charge had to tell him to stand up and stay away from the crocs. The biggest croc was 2.5 mtrs long (about as big as they get).
Ruth volunteered to help feed them but the photo I got just looks like she is fishing! I did get some nice shots though, except the reflections on the water made it somewhat difficult to get a really good shot.
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| Ruth fishing for fresh water crocs. |
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| This lady caught one but it got away |
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| 250 year old Bottle Tree |
Tomorrow we head for the border and Kununurra WA.
