Day 36 – Sat, 14 Aug to Pine Creek

I am back in internet range so I have posted days 34, 35 and 36 today so check these out first.

Well after I wrote the blog post last night I headed back down to the pool for a late evening swim – yeah just rubbing it in again. This morning I woke at 6am and headed out for a walk before breakfast, sunrise up here is not until around 7 so it was still quite dark.

I headed down to the pool to watch the sunrise over the falls and decided to do the circuit walk up one side, across the back of the top and down the other. Not what I had planned as I was in thongs rather then good walking shoes, but hey I was there and the moment took me away.

The flying foxes that had taken off the night before, filling the sky above were now heading back for the day. They hung from the trees to the S of the pool and it is amazing the amount of talking that goes on between them. They must be a real social group with the numbers in any given tree and the thousands in the trees overhead.

I headed up the path, saw what I thought were small frogs, but then maybe they were small cane toads – too difficult in the light.  A sign said that if you are walking in the early hours of the morning look for the beautiful orb spider, the large female and the small males. The webs could be across the track.

Well not more then a metre up the track and there was one, I cleared the path of the web but I know by the time I returned I was pulling webs from my head and body – I was that day’s track web cleaner. I had visions of spiders all over me.

So the walk took about one and half hours and climbed to a platform that overlooks the W part of the park. At the top, the Tabletop Plateau, the vegetation was more stunted trees and open grass, quite different from the palm and heavily clustered growth around the creek and pools below the falls.

The return trip on the N part of the pool was a downhill, steep descent across many roughly made steps. This played havoc with my L knee. This was soon soothed by a swim in the Wangi Falls pool again. It was bliss, I was the only person there so I had the whole pool to myself – just serene.

After breakfast and breaking camp I made a straight trip back to the Stuart Hwy and headed S. Passed through Adelaide River, and then took a slight detour (about 65km) through the ranges and some twistie road before rejoining the Stuart Hwy further S. I had been riding for over 2 hours covering a little over 250km when I arrived in Pine Creek (where the S entrance to Kakadu meets the Stuart Hwy). 

This is an old mining and railway town – much bigger then I first thought. So I had morning tea, the temperature was high (it was 35C when I had left Wangi Falls at 10:30), and I thought who needs to be riding today, so I booked into the Pine Creek Motel (what a luxury), part of the Hotel complex. So this afternoon I am having a cold ale (first one for almost a week – well maybe 4 odd days) and sitting in the cool of the outdoor beer garden writing this blog.

Oh I only have photos from this morning around the Wangi Falls walk, at breakfast I sat on my camera and broke the electronics, so I’ll have to see whether I can get another camera in Katherine.