The Adelaide River War Cemetery & Katherine

On the road towards Katherine we stopped in at the Adelaide River War Cemetery. A truly moving experience with an ghostly beauty. We quietly wandered the site, reading the names of many soldiers that had lost their lives during the war, as well as civilians that died during the Darwin bombing, many as young as 16. Reading through a long list of names we found both POWELL & THOMPSON’S, we felt extremely humbled and forever grateful for their sacrifices. There is no way you could leave this site and not feel extremely lucky and proud to be Australian, as we did.

For a short time it was a quiet drive on to Katherine as we both reflected on our visit to the cemetery, but as you know, I never stay quiet long. We arrived at Springvale Homestead where we were to camp for the next few nights. A beautiful place to stay with alot of history. We enjoyed a cup of tea and scones and walked through the old stone homestead (in true grey nomad style). Mostly we used our stay here as a base to explore the Katherine area.

We decided to head out for the day, first stop Cutta Cutta Caves. It compulsory to take a guided tour of the spectacular caves and well worth the extra information along the walk. We slowly crept further and further into the caves admiring the beautiful stalagmites/stalactites that shined a crystal white as if covered in diamonds. We even learned of history of the soldiers coming into the caves during the war and blowing the beautiful formations off for fun, you can still see the results of it today.

I was excited about heading the to the Katherine Gorge but that soon deflated when we arrived. There isn’t much you can do that isn’t expensive there. All activities at the gorge, including flights and boat tours must be booked through one agent when you arrive. Unfortunately we had just missed the last boat tour which was $75 each for 2 hours. Our only other option was to do a flight and we decided to give it a miss. We walked to the boat ramp and I have no doubt the rest of the gorge would be spectacular, however I still can’t get my head around how inaccessible some of these place are, hence no photo's of this one sorry. They are NATIONAL PARKS and we should be free to visit them, so frustrated and with no bushwalks to take us exploring further we returned to camp to prepare for our trip across the border in WA tomorrow!! We knew there would be many more spectacular gorges where we were heading.

Entrance to the Adelaide River War Cemetery

The Historic Springvale Homestead