Katherine

I just asked Ben what to write here – and these were his suggestions; busy, long waits and queues, not to mention being overpriced and overcommercialised at Katherine Gorge. ($5.50 to put your own canoe in the water… $76 to hire one for 4 hours) So clearly we are both tired, sick of paying for things, and spoilt from all the wonderfully stunning places we have already visited.  We did walk to the top of Katherine Gorge (which was the free activity) to see first pool/ river of water.  Apparently the second pool is better, but of course we didn’t get to that one.  The Katherine River did look amazing and peaceful, and as we gazed upon it we decided that we would come back without small children and canoe down it on an overnight adventure.  Add that to twin falls and Jim Jim, and we have a new trip in the making…

would you believe Nick had a major breakdown about wearing this hat?
- less than 10 minutes before this photos was taken!

We ventured south of Katherine on the Sunday to join the Barunga festival, to try out something a bit different.  Barunga is an Aboriginal community that opens itself to the public for a festival annually, to celebrate all things indigenous alongside us Balanda (non-Aboriginal people).  On arriving, we took our time to scope out the feel of the festival, which had a huge tent city next to constant games of football, basketball, softball.  Our first stop for the day was checking out the didgeridoo making – which we did not take part in, but gladly looked on (free).  Next was the very cool spear throwing competition between men from all around this region.   We loved hearing the MC continually asking people who kept walking behind the target (a kangaroo) to move out of the road as he explained the dangers.  After a number of spears were thrown, he would then call the kids to retrieve them for the next round, and around 20 kids would race to the spear to be the first there to pull it out and return it to the thrower.  Sam and Nick will tell you that their favourite part of the day was seeing the Barunga school children join circus performers for their very own Fruit Fly Circus.  They were so cute as they set about doing tricks that the circus performers had been training them in during the 5 week lead up to the festival.  Clearly the trainers had been touched also by the lives of the little ones, and a few tears were shed as they finished their performance.  We were reminded about the value and rewards of true partnership and generosity of spirit.



By 5:30pm we sat around the stage and watched Gurrumul Yunupingu play, followed by almost 2 hours of traditional dancing.  The kids were excited that we had allowed them to stay past their bedtimes in the dark.