Wilsons on the road: Saturday 18 May 2013

Saturday 18 May 2013 - Flora River Nature Park

We left Edith Falls on Tuesday and spent two days and two nights in Katherine, catching up on washing, shopping and other odds and ends (preparing for a certain little girl’s 4th birthday included). The girls terrorised most of the grey nomads in the caravan park, adopting them as temporary grandparents and Glenn got chatting to the couple next door, discovering they used to work for the brother of the manager at Mittiebah Station. Big country, small world! I managed to squeeze a morning run in and took the girls to the very cool caravan park pool a few times. We returned to the hot springs only once and they were even clearer than last time, as there’s been no more rain. The girls got pink pool noodles at the local Dollars and Sense store and obsessed over them both at the campground and when they went swimming, so that helped keep them entertained for a while.

The drive from Katherine to Flora River wasn’t long, with 46km of dirt road from the highway turnoff. We couldn’t think of a time we’d been on the dirt since we left Limbunya, even though the camper is still coated in red dirt. Needless to say, it’s even dustier now! We arrived at the campground just before lunchtime and were delighted to see there was no one else around. We picked the shadiest spot we could find and squeezed the camper in (it’s more suited to a caravan) and relaxed. An hour or so later, an old guy towing a caravan on his own pulled in and seemed to glare at us. He went and started to set up at a different site, but took off a few hours afterwards. We suspect he’s a local and we’d stolen his spot! Oh well, you can’t please everyone. In the meantime, another family pulled in and set up, but they’re far enough away for us to still feel like we’ve got some privacy.

The nature park itself is beautiful – Flora River is quite pretty, surrounded by shady trees tinged a deep green colour by the tufa deposits. Fishing is supposed to be brilliant, but Glenn’s not keen on putting the boat in as the river is also home to many a crocodile and launching it would require two people (which leaves no one to watch the girls). Unfortunately this also means swimming is off the agenda. There are two short walks to some pretty nearby waterfalls, but as they take you right down alongside the river, we didn’t want to spend too long in croc country. The boat ramp is also a pretty amazing feature in itself – a stainless steel winch that covers the steep drop from the car park down to the river.

It’s been lovely just pottering around, not worrying too much about the girls because they can’t go and trash someone else’s camp. I said to Glenn yesterday that it wasn’t until we pulled up and discovered we were on our own that I realised how tiring it can be staying in campgrounds or caravan parks in close vicinity to other people. Much of our chastising the girls is related to ensuring they’re not too loud or intrusive around others, so when there aren’t other people for them to bother, we relax a lot more too. The weather here is fairly warm but the shade is definitely a help. It feels more humid than it has been and last night we all slept fairly dreadfully because it didn’t cool down enough to get us into that deep comfortable sleep.