Day 25 - 23 June - Mataranka to Katherine - 110 km

A cold night and a colder morning.  We were up early and packed. Joe headed off into town for breakfast and to pick up sandwiches for our lunch.  I finished packing and headed after him and on the way ran into Jimmy, a Taiwanese guy who is cycling in Australia.  He started in Melbourne and has already done lots of Australia.  He is heading in the opposite direction to us and was going to Larrimah today.  Communication was difficult as my Taiwanese was almost as good as Jimmy's English.

He had his bike on a stand and I managed to knock his whole bike over.  A Frank Drebin moment.

Met Joe in town and got some breakfast.  He was looking more suspicious than normal and the local constabulary took him aside and gave him a full body search.  As you can see from the photo he obviously enjoyed the experience.

I did ask the constable to handcuff and taser Joe, but he wouldn't be in it.

Off we go again.  A quick 60 km and we stopped at the King River rest stop about 11:00 for lunch.  We had a great tailwind all day today and I reached Katherine before 2:00 pm.

Our first stop was to say Gidday to Chris Righton, Simon's son at Katherine Camping and Fishing.  Second stop...McDonalds for a thick shake.  You know you have reached civilisation when you find a Maccas.

We decided to go to a backpackers rather than a caravan park because I was sick of sleeping on my Thermarest and wanted to sleep in a real bed, and we also wanted to charge up our devices and cook our own food.

We got a 4 bed dorm at Cocos.  We have stayed at some strange places, and this is well up there.  Its like living in a 3rd world community house.

Quirky.












Katherine is a biggish town and even has a Woolies so we could buy food for tea and breakfast.  Lots of Aboriginals hanging around the streets, on many street corners, behind buildings, in parks etc.  We met a bloke after leaving Chris who told us not to leave the bikes unattended and to always lock them up and still keep an eye on the.

Had a great porterhouse and salad for tea washed down with a few James Squires.  Didn't think I would be able to get it up here.  You can usually only get XXXX Gold, Coopers or some of the Hahn products.

Coco came and had a chat with us while we were eating and showed us a large folder of all the bike riders that have been through his place.

We are riding out to Katherine Gorge tomorrow and will stay at the caravan park and take some kayaks down the first gorge.