22nd August, Katherine NT, 511 kms today 8,032 kms to date

We are in Katherine in the Northern Territory tonight. This destination wasn’t originally planned as part of our trip but because we decided to give the Buntine highway from Halls Creek to Dunmarra Roadhouse on the Stuart highway a miss we are taking the long way round to Tennant Creek (via Kununurra and Katherine). We left Kununurra at 8.15am this morning to another sparkling day. Here is our cabin at The Kimberley Land Caravan Park. It is right on the lake and we enjoyed a beautiful sunset last night.

We met a couple of riders, Dave and Rod, at Timber Creek on the way to Katherine. They were heading for the Gibb river road so we gave them the drum on road conditions. They were both riding Suzuki DR’s One of them was a novice like Colin and had already had a fall on his way to Borroloola and was nursing a sore shoulder.

This is Australia’s answer to the Colorado river except we have greenery covering the banks instead of desert.  The Victoria River is claimed to be Australia’s last “wild” river.

Victoria River

Here we are on the bridge over the Colorado, sorry Victoria river in NT.

We rode our motorbikes along the pedestrian way of the bridge over the Victoria river. I nearly didn’t make as my panniers stuck out so far they touched the railings on both side. Steve was riding with us on a Yamaha Tenere heading for Darwin.  He had been working for years in Port Hedland on a fly in fly out basis from Brisbane, but had packed it in.


We arrived in Katherine NT at 5pm as we had lost one and a half hours coming from Kununurra WA. We decided to have dinner in the restaurant attached to our accommodation, the Knotts Crossing Resort. It was very good and reasonably priced.