Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Katherine Gorge


As Lisa asked, you can see our itinary here.
And yes, it was the end of autumn down there, but in the North, it is still pretty hot.

From Darwin, we embarked for a 6-days tours to Alice Spring and its surroundings.
Our first stop was in Katherine Gorge.
As we arrived, we heard some weird shrieks, together with a strange noise. Then we saw tall trees with black fruits on them. No, no, wait, the fruits are moving and shrieking!
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Yes, it was a colony of bats trying to rest under the heat. To do so, they kept moving their wings, and I suppose the shrieks are meant to keep contact with each other. The day before, we had seen some flying in  Darwin. I have bats visiting my garden here, but they are tiny little things. Those are hudge!

After that, we saw this beautiful tree:

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and at least arrived at the river.
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It was hot and the river looked fresh and very tempting, except for one little detail:
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This trap is meant for crocodiles. We saw their prints on several beaches along the river, and one young one in the water...
It was hot, we we did climb there to have a look. Worth the effort, believe me!
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And yes, Neki, I don't know how I managed to come home... sigh...

3 comments:

Lisa at Greenbow said...

How utterly beautiful. I love seeing the bats in the trees. We too have very small bats. Can't imagine a tree full of these big beasts. I wouldn't be swimming with crocs either. I need to see a map of Australia to know where abouts you were. I thought that it was fall going into winter there. The fora is gorgeous.

Anonymous said...

Oh, those bats are such a surprising sight!

Susan Elliott said...

Hello Veronique! I am so happy to be reading your posts about Australia. Do you know the name of the beautiful tree in this post?