Katherine

Starting off canoeing on Katherine Gorge, looking confident

Starting off at 8am was a beautiful time of day

Made it to the end of the first gorge!

Almost finished.... getting tired now

We’ve had a nice few days in Katherine staying with Megan and Jamal – it was especially nice staying in a family home for a change! We arrived at their place and had lunch with Jamal on Tuesday, then spent the afternoon copying CDs at the local library while Nick cleaned the car within an inch of its life. We both can’t recognise the car now it looks so different, as it hasn’t been this clean (on the outside) since we bought it, just looks wrong almost! If it didn’t have the pod on the roof we’d have trouble finding it in a car park. Tuesday night we went along to a school musical night which featured Sammi, one of Megan and Jamal’s sons, which was pretty fun, the acts ranged from the pre-schoolers singing Never Smile At A Crocodile up to 5^th and 6^th graders putting on little acts about reading (kids’ book week), one of them starring Sammi doing a reading.

Conor and Daniel were in heaven getting to play with other kids again, with big boy toys and watch tv, so wished we could have stayed longer. This morning we got up early and went canoeing on Katherine Gorge which was just beautiful. We tried to book canoes for the whole day, but could only get them for the morning session, which was actually enough in the end – after not swimming for 4 ½ months my arms and shoulders aren’t up to it! It meant that we couldn’t go further than the first gorge, but it’s the longest and was lovely anyway. It was actually very peaceful just paddling along, nice and quiet – even the couple of tourist cruise boats that went past didn’t bother us, and we just cruised up to the end, hopped out, looked at some rock art and peered into the second gorge, before heading back again. I’m sure I saw an archer fish spitting water out trying to catch an insect along the way, which was pretty cool. Then it was back to Megan and Jamal’s to pack up, take in our two loads of washing they kindly let us do, and head off into the sunset, down south. We’ve made it to Daly Waters just as it was getting dark, in time to have dinner at the pub, full strength beer (!) and watch the free show, which we all enjoyed (comedy, poetry and songs). Tomorrow it’s up early again and off on the Carpentaria Highway, to Limmen NP.

Gunlom

View from top of Gunlom Falls

Rockpools at top of Gunlom Falls

We got to Gunlom at lunchtime yesterday which was the opportune time to come, as it meant we could nab the shadiest spot, an essential in this weather! We cooked up a nice lunch and caught up on journals in the heat of the day, then later in the afternoon we climbed up to the top of the waterfall. It’s a very convenient campground as it’s right at the base of the falls, so it’s only 1k up to the top where there are a number of beautiful pools you can swim in that lead up to the edge – just like a natural infinity pool! It’s also one of the few swimming holes in Kakadu that the boys got into because it wasn’t cold, so they had a great time jumping in and out and it generally refreshed us after a hot day, and we were all still a bit tired after the big day at the festival. We stopped in to have a look at the waterfall from the bottom on the way back and, combined with the pools at the top, I can see why this place was Marion’s favourite in Kakadu – it’s a bit of a long corrugated drive in but is really worth it.

This morning we walked up to the top again before leaving because there was a ranger talk on – it was interesting that the ranger was brought up in Kakadu, his dad being a ranger and his mum a teacher in Jabiru, so having that pedigree (although with red hair he couldn’t look more anglo!), he now has one of the coveted permanent ranger positions, as opposed to a lot of them who are on 6 monthly contracts for the dry season only. He knows the park backwards of course and knows a lot about the plants which he told us about, and about the attempts to manage the feral buffalo, cattle, horses and pigs here. It’s a shame but I guess not surprising that we saw our first cane toads on our first night in Kakadu, and in Arnhem Land as well. They’re all over the place at night, and then there’s the squashed ones on the road during the day. It can only get worse as we go East! We’ve really enjoyed Kakadu in the short time we were here, a very special place.

Stone Country Festival

crossing the East Alligator river to Arnhem Land

Masks made at Stone Country Festival

Trying to cool down with frozen mango cups

Chocolate covered banana

The 'scared kangaroo' target

Spear throwing competition

Norforce display

Dancing Daniel

Sunrise over Stone Country

We left Kakadu for 24 hours yesterday and dipped our toe into Arnhem Land across the East Alligator river. We had been told and seen posters about the Stone Country Festival which was on yesterday in Gunbalanya/Oenpelli, so decided to see what it was like. Usually you need a permit to go into Arnhem Land, and I gather most people go on a tour, but they waive it for this festival. It’s a community on the western side of Arnhem Land, quite big I think (compared to the other ones we’ve seen as it has fair sized primary and high schools. The East Alligator river that you have to cross to get over there is tidal, so we had to time our crossing (more wild croc spotting!), and it was either get up really early or cross at lunchtime, which we chose. It meant that we missed out on a few things at the festival (including spear making, which was a pity) but there were still things to see. The drive there winds through impressive looking big rock piles (hence the name Stone Country I think) and then you get to the community alongside a river, with cows alongside. A few AFL teams had come over from Darwin and surrounding areas to compete in a competition which went most of the day with a grand final at the end, there was also a womens’ basketball competition, a running race (which we missed), and a spear throwing competition at the end which we saw. They had made a big papier mache ‘scared kangaroo’ for people to aim at, and passed around a spear thrower too so it looked pretty cool. Unfortunately the wind made a mess of a lot of the throws but one guy got close enough and won the $150 prize! One thing I found hard was that it was 36 degrees with hardly any shade so I was wilting after a while – everything was quite spread out over the town so it involved lots of trudging around between things feeling hot hot hot. The few drinks stalls that there were ran out of cold drinks pretty quickly so it was lukewarm water or softdrink for a while there. While walking around we came across a display from the Army’s Norforce unit, which covers from the Gulf to Broome along the top of Australia. They take any opportunity to try and recruit indigenous people I think, so in order to attract people they had a set up of a few real guns which were like a magnet to our boys – one had a grenade launcher! We had a look through the art gallery there which has mostly woven baskets and paintings done on bark, sort of xray style like the rock art around here. Later in the day there was also some traditional singing and dancing by three different groups. The first group, local I think,, managed to convince their elder women to get up and dance with them (sort of like backup grannies) but they only lasted about 3 songs before they refused to go any further and walked off – it was just too hot (even for them!). The middle group of guys from Croker Island were great, really energetic, and the final group even got as many whities in the audience as they could (including Nick and the boys!) up to dance with them, and even the grannies came back for this.

We set up our trailer in a field and then headed back for dinner – kangaroo lasagne was for sale, as were a few Thai dishes, so we sat on the oval eating them while we watched some of the many bands playing, that in fact went until midnight!  Conor and Nick had chocolate covered bananas grown in the community’s market garden, while Daniel had a dance in the dark. This morning we were up to see a beautiful dawn coming across the mountains/rocks with a mist lying on the ground (it is winter after all, even if it is 36 degrees during the day!), crossed the East Alligator again and had breakfast at the picnic tables on the Kakadu side. Now we have one more night here at Gunlom before beginning to head South then East.

Jim Jim Falls

View over Twin Falls in one direction

and in the other direction

And the river up the top

Croc trap at start of Jim Jim Falls walk

Almost at Jim Jim Falls swimming pool

Saltwater crocodile at Yellow Waters

Yellow Waters sunset

A big day today. We got out and about as early as we could (which was admittedly not particularly early) and drove the 2 hours to Twin Falls first. It’s not a far distance, just a slow road, with probably our deepest river crossing yet – it showed 60cm on the markers. We launched into it pretty much just crossing fingers and toes, but knowing that lots of people had already done it (including the Ralhs about 10 days ago) - although I was still asking myself, what would we do if we got stuck, or if someone else got stuck? There’s all sorts of signs saying don’t get out of your vehicle and don’t swim etc because of crocodiles, but I’m not sure how we’d unhitch our winch or get out our recovery gear without getting in the water…. Anyway it wasn’t a problem (concrete bottom) and we got there at about 10.30am to do the walk over the top of Twin Falls. We decided to do the longer walk there (it was either a long walk at Twin Falls or Jim Jim Falls) in order to do it as early in the day as possible, to avoid the heat – although you can’t really avoid the heat here, just minimise it I guess. Anyway it was a nice walk up the hill and through forest (but hot!), before coming out on top of the (at the moment small) falls and then walking along what’s left of the river for a bit.

After that we drove back to Jim Jim Falls for lunch and then the shorter walk to the plunge pool, which, although not long, wasn’t particularly easy because of lots of boulders to climb over, so we really were hot by the time we got into the gorge. There’s a little trickle of water coming down the falls at the moment, but the plunge pool at the bottom was still a lovely relief to have a dip in to cool down. It was slightly unnerving to see a crocodile trap set up on the way in but hard to believe that they would be able to get in there over all of those boulders. Anyway we didn’t hang around terribly long because we wanted to get back to Yellow Water for ice creams and the sunset over the wetlands (yes the Ralhs, we followed your itinerary almost to the letter). We made it in plenty of time, saw our first saltie in the wild (probably the same ones the Ralhs saw since there was only one) and watched a beautiful sunset. We decided not to do the sunset boat cruise even though it would have been really cool, largely because it’s so extortionately expensive. Apparently they’re wondering why they haven’t had many tourists this year…. There’s loads of birdlife there and beautiful scenery, and now it’s back to the tent for a late dinner – I’m still hot!

Kakadu Day 2

Anbangbang rock art

Nabulwinjbulwinj, the guy with the yam and an issue with women

Lightning Man on the right (carrying lightning over his head)

View from Anbangbang lookout

Anbangbang lookout

Today we moved on from our campground at Merl, near Ubirr, which was a shame really because it was a really nice one, and headed first to Jabiru. I don’t really know much about the town except that I think it’s a mining one like Tom Price, mainly set up for the people who work at the Ranger mine and their families, and probably for people who work at the national park as well (although they’d be in the minority). It’s smaller than Tom Price but has all the essentials from our point of view – fuel, supermarket, newsagency, library, bakery and public pool (which the Ralhs highly recommended). We spent a while at the library where the kids were very impressed at the wide selection of books that they would like, and we tried to copy as many audio books as we could in the short time.  After we had half an Emily Rodda book we decided we’d taken long enough and drove down to our next campsite for 2 nights, at Muirella. It’s a nice one too but not as shady as Merl, but the with same nice solar showers which have a huge rose hanging down from the ceiling (like at your rental Helene) which blasts all over you. Nick loves it but I find it a bit hard to keep my hair from getting wet! Nice to have a shower anyway since it’s really hot here! We were here by lunchtime which was also a nice change, so we had lunch in the tent – we’re even putting up the annex walls here because of the apparently voracious mozzies – and then headed to Ahnbangbang for some more rock art and ranger talks. It wasn’t quite as prolific as at Ubirr but still pretty good – we had the same ranger woman giving the talks and boy she really loves her job, even though she’s only employed for 6 months at a time (for the dry season) she comes back every year.

We have both been getting a really peaceful feeling about the places we’ve been so far at Kakadu – apart from the first sunset at Ubirr there really aren’t that many tourists, or at least not where we are, and we were expecting it to be overrun at this time of year. The walk around Anbangbang (how’s that for another cool name) also included another lookout with a view down to the south of Kakadu which again was beautiful. The ranger mentioned that a long time ago it used to mostly be covered by sea with the cliffs in the distance sticking up out of it, which you can really imagine because the woodland is now so flat. The kids liked one of the rock art pictures of Nabulwinjbulwinj, who used to lie in wait for women and hit them over the head (killing them) with a yam. Beware the killer sweet potato!!!

After that it was a brief walk around the deserted Ahnbangbang Billabong which was lovely, although we were a bit uneasy and didn’t linger what with all of the crocodile warning signs (which are there permanently), although I doubt that all of those birds would be hanging around if they were about to get eaten.

Kakadu

Boxing croc at Humpty Doo

Rock art at Ubirr

Sunset at Ubirr

Our first day in Kakadu - wow. We left Litchfield NP this morning, stopping briefly at the town with the coolest name – Humpty Doo – for fuel, ice and supermarket, plus a quick photo of the big boxing crocodile, and made it to the campground at Ubirr in time to set up lightnight fast. We were trying to make the set of ranger talks starting at the rock art sites at Ubirr at 4.30, and we managed to only miss the first one. The rock art sites there just blew my mind, so much better than any others we’ve seen, and just so much of them. We thought they were better than the ones at Uluru, but realised that it’s possibly because they’ve been retouched about 20 years ago or more. I think certain people who belong to the relevant dreaming are allowed to retouch only the relevant painting (ie the turtle dreaming person can retouch the pictures of the long necked turtle), but they’re still amazing. Walls and walls of them, and those are only the ones that the public are allowed to see, not the private ones. There are quite a few pictures of people, some with dilly bags and some with spear throwers, some spirit people, some hand prints, plus lots and lots of barramundi, turtles, wallabies, goannas (basically what people used to eat), and even a Tasmanian tiger, which shows how far up the country they used to live. There was even a picture of a westerner smoking a pipe, and a few pictures of mullet with their heads snapped off, which was apparently the way to stop them getting back into the water.

The final talk was on the top of a lookout over the wetlands which had stunning views in every direction, it was a beautiful place, very peaceful with sounds of birds below, and it was timed so that the sun set about 20 minutes after the talk had finished. There was a crowd of people up there, as watching the sunset from there is the ‘thing’ to do around here, but it didn’t detract from the moment at all, as everyone was just sitting there quietly, watching, taking it in (except our kids). A great way to finish the day and an exciting introduction to Kakadu – I think part of it was just that I’m excited to be here to be honest.