Kakadone
Day 1
Rudely awakened at 7am by Rob banging on the door - "Quick Matt, the bus is here!". Fair enough - we were due to be picked up at 6.45am. So in a state of disarray I bundled all my stuff together and ran outside only to find that - quelle surprise - the bus wasn't there yet, but his trickery had got me out of bed at least. We were picked up eventually by Steve from Hunter Safaris. Two people had, for some reason, not made it, so there were only 7 in the group, including Liz and Jo whom Rob and I had gone to Litchfield with. En route I read in the Northern Territorian about a bus from Northern Territory Adventure Tours that had blown a tyre, injuring 11 tourists only 2 days before! Steve piped up that Hunter's had also had a crash but that it had been kept out of the papers. Alrighty then. Two hours or so's worth of driving later and we were in the park itself, 20 000 km sq or the size of Wales, except no sheep that I could see.
"Kakadu" comes from the aboriginal language "Gagudu", one of the languages spoken at the turn of century but extinct now. I was visiting in the "dry" season of almost no rain, but lower temperatures, as opposed to the "wet" or "green" season of higher rainfall and temperatures. Or that's how most Aussies of European descent would see it anyway. The local aboriginal tribes recognise 6 seasons in Kakadu, ranging from "Yegge" (cold but still humid) in May-start of June, through "Gurrung" (hot dry weather) in mid-August to the first or so week in October, to "Bang-Gerrang" (knock 'em down storms) in April. The places you can visit in the wet and dry vary considerably - the places I went to are seasonally under several metres of water.
The first stop was "The Window on the Wetlands" information centre, where I experienced a mudskipper's view of the world. Then it was onto Anbangbang billabong, where Linda Kowalski took a shot at Paul Hogan in "Crocodile Dundee". This was overlooked by Nourlangie Rock, the common name for the raised plateau; Steve had told us that this wasn't actaully the local aboringal name, but I forgot the name he told us (although it did begin with a "b"). Painted onto the rock, which we visited next, was a lot of aboriginal art work, some of which was 1500 years old. Amazing. Steve told us a lot of the things the information boards didn't, which were a lot of the things that "whitefellas" were not supposed to know. He was a posotove font of information, as he knows a few of the local elders. For example, when an early European explorer pointed to a kangaroo and asked an aboriginal what it was, the aboringal replied "kangaroo". Obvious? No, as "kangaroo" in that language meant "I don't know"!
From Nourlangie we travelled 60km along a track to Jim Jim falls, where we went on a short bush walk and had a swim in freezing water. After this we went along to Jim Jim campground and set up for the night. Steve cooked an awesome dinner, with onion rings done in oyster and worcestershire sauce. Tasty. Went to sleep in swags underneath the stars.
Day 2
We got up today, broke camp and headed off to see Twin falls, which involved driving along a lot of dirt roads and then hiking for an hour or so to get to Budjmi lookout, where we had a great view of the falls. We then walked around to the top of the falls. In the wet the falls are 150m high, but in the dry they are only 90m high, so the top is walkable. And climbable. To get down to the very top, though, we had to climb down through "The Chimney", a narrow crack in the rock. One of the group, Rachel, didn't fancy it, but the rest of us descended. We eventually got to a plunge pool just above the main falls, with a great view. Steve had reckoned it would be the most beautiful thing we had ever seen, and he was almost right in my case, but he'd reckoned without the Great Barrier Reef. Also, in the little plunge pool at the top of the falls was a small tunnel you colud swim through to get to a small cavern. Very cool!
After Twin Falls we hiked back down and drove back to the campground. Dinner was awesome once again, and we met Marty, one of the other tour guides, who played two digeridoos at once! Impressive.
Day 3
Once again, up at practically the crak of dawn (8am). Steve had to fix a flat tyre that had blown overnight. Then we drove off to see Yellow Waters, but didn't go swimming as there were several large "Ginahs" (saltwater crocs) in it.
Then we drove to Barramudi Gorge, walked up to the top and found some great plunge pools, including one with a 20ft leap. Had to be done.
And that was that. We drove back to Darwin, except that 500m from the city the back left tyre blew again! But this only took 15 minutes to fix. Back at the YHA I went to bed early (well, midnight). Steve had said that after the trip we'd be tired, dirty and broken. But happy, and he was right.
If you respect the land,
then you will feel the land.
Your experience will be one that you
cannot get anywhere else in the world.
Jawoyn Aboriginal traditional owner
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