Finally after many cases of telephone and text message tag with the FOPS’s, (including the wonderful message above……. “meet you in restaurant in pink cat” . By way of explaination, Telstra provides this as a free service - and sends any voice mail left for you on your mobile off to ???somewhere overseas, where someone dutifully tries to interpret the message left on your phone, converts it to a text message and sends it back to you…. I believe what Fran actually said was “ we’ll meet you in Katherine on the 10th”!!!!
Anyway, despite this, the 10th arrived and we were up at ‘sparrows fart’ in order to make the 3 hour drive to Katherine and be there as early as possible to spend time with our lovely friends.
We were all so excited at the prospect of catching up with Paul, Fran, Oliver, and Sienna, that after set up, Ethan sat at the edge of the road to be sure to be in place for the first possible glance of their arrival.
I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to see them all with much squeals of joy and hugging to be done. And even though they had endured more than their fair share of misadventures prior to their arrival they were all glowing after their Kimberley adventures.
We spent a fantastic 2 days with our wonderful friends, slipping straight into the easy comfortable companionship and laughter that you have with folk you know well and love. Strangly there were times that it all seemed so “normal” that I had to remind myself that we were all actually in the Northern Territory, and not in Shorncliffe sitting on our back deck.
Our time together culminated in a splendid cruise down Katherine Gorge in Nitmiluk National Park which included a sumptuous feast, and where we were able to watch the changing colours of the gorge during sunset, whilst sipping champaign and nibbling on canape’s. Then all too sadly it was time to wave off our dear friends and pack up ready to head into Kakadu.
