Day 63 – 25/05/2011 Litchfield National Park – Katherine

Day 63 – 25/05/2011 Litchfield National Park – Katherine

Today was one of those days where we should have seen chaos and confusion coming, the early warning signs for calamity were certainly present but we just chose to ignore them….at our own peril!! We were up early and ready to leave Litchfield NP when we discovered that the car had a flat battery, not only had we (no one owned up to the mistake) left the car door slightly ajar but we had left the car unlocked all night.  No problems we just found a friendly grey nomad who was willing to jump start us.  We even had our own jumper leads being the good boy scouts we are!!. 

Magnetic Termite Mounds

So off we headed to the Magnetic Termite mounds, these are clever little termites that build their mounds facing magnetic North and they are narrow (no thicker than 60cm) on either end, this ensures that they get the sun from the morning and afternoon on their flattest sides and because they are narrow they do not have any cold spots during the day – very clever – to me they looked like headstones.

The second indicator that something was brewing was the almighty head wind that we were travelling into all the way to Katherine, this slowed us down significantly and the car just gobbled up the petrol and periodically when the wind really picked up we got a bad case of the death wobbles!!



Cathedral Termite Mounds - these are everywhere
throughout the Northern Territory.  Happy family
snap before the day headed south!!



The third and really obvious indicator was when we stopped for petrol and the car just refused to start and made the noise that anyone who has had a flat battery before is familiar with.  That problem was easily resolved we thought we just got a friendly tourist to jump start us and off we went to the tourist information centre, and Pete headed off to buy a new battery, problem solved, well at least we thought so.

After gathering a few supplies and getting up to date information of open / closed National Parks between Katherine and Kunnanurra (WA) we headed off for lunch.  As we pulled into a pretty little park beside the Katherine River both Pete and I could smell this terrible burning smell and it quickly became apparent that the smell was us – well to be truthful the smell was coming from under the bonnet and oh my from in the caravan.  As Peter explored the problem under the bonnet I started to hear him exclaim “oh my goodness, idiot, oh how could I have??” when I built up the courage to call out “what?” he mumbled something about “being so stupid, putting the positive on the negative and cooking the electrics!!” I really didn’t need to ask any more questions!!

The kids and I decided that the safest place for us was at the creek and we sent Pete and the caravan off to find an auto electrician who could make things all better again.  After a while Pete returned and explained that the problem could be rectified tomorrow!!  Unfortunately even with a few hours to kill we didn’t catch any fish.  So, as we had no choice but to stay in Katherine for the night we booked into a caravan park and settled in for dinner.

The other major catastrophe for today….we don’t have a television and it is State of Origin!! Pete really isn’t a happy camper!!