Day 51 13/5/2011 Edith Falls to Katherine to Umbrawarra Gorge

Day 51 13/5/2011 Edith Falls to Katherine to Umbrawarra Gorge

Zac’s 12^th Birthday

Zac never being a child to really heed his mother’s threats woke Pete and I around 4:30am heaving his dinner out, luckily for all of us he made it out of the caravan, poor Zac he was so ill.  He continued to vomit on and off for the next four hours so we decided to head back to Katherine and take him to the hospital, he was so unwell he wouldn’t even open his birthday presents, Zac explained that he didn’t want to vomit on them.  We weren’t sure if he had a stomach bug or was having a reaction to the antibiotics prescribed for his ear infection and we weren’t keen to head away from the closest hospital until the vomiting had been resolved!!  Amazing, back to the Katherine A&E we headed!!  Trying to explain to the doctor who I only saw a few days ago with Claudia that my kids were normally fit and healthy didn’t really ring true!!   



Zac's birthday cake



After having a drip put in his arm, and an anti-nausea tablet under his tongue Zac was released feeling much better around 2pm.  The doctor advised that his vomiting has highly likely to be a side effect of the oral antibiotic and she suggested that we stop him taking them and just use the drops for his ears.  With this news under our belt we decided to leave Katherine and headed off for somewhere in Kakadu for the night.

But as with all well laid plans we didn’t make it to Kakadu, in fact about 3kms before Pine Creek we saw the sign for Umbrawarra Gorge and we decided to head off down the dirt track.  James (my brother) had sent us a message earlier in the week suggesting we go to Edith Falls and Umbrawarra Gorge so on his recommendation I was able to convince Pete to go back onto dirt.  The road was actually quite good and we only had 21kms of dirt, I knew a little bit of cleaning would be required when we got there as the caravan is just a vacuum for the red dust!!  The challenge turned out to be the very skinny driveway into the camp ground.  Needless to say we were the only caravan in there!!

We were able though to have a fire and sing happy birthday to Zac, he was starting to look a little better and even managed to eat some birthday cake.  He eventually opened his presents and the day certainly ended better than it started for him!!

Hopefully this is the end of the sickness and injuries for us, all of the kids now have a NT medical record number and we have met some amazing medical staff and received amazingly prompt treatment.  I am grateful for the medical care the children have received on this trip but will be really happy if we do not need to visit another hospital for any of us!!!