Day 21 - Kakadu National Park (Yellow Waters) and trip to Katherine

Day 21 - Kakadu National Park (Yellow Waters) and trip to Katherine

11/8/2013

What a wonderful place, every day we were in this camping (Cooinda), we had free buffet breakfast. I am not sure if it was actually included in the price of the camping, but I dared not ask. By the way, do you know the story about the man that wanted to smoke in a cinema?

It goes like this...

A man gets into a cinema and when he was being shown to his seat by the usher, he asked if he could smoke. The usher said a emphatic 'Of course not!'; then the man asked 'How come those 2 over there are smoking then?; and the usher replied 'that's because they didn't ask'.

Something to learn here? Maybe. Just in case I didn't ask. I just followed the crowd. maybe everybody was wrong, if so, I am happy to be wrong to and suffer the consequences of getting a free buffet breakfast.

Anyway, we camped near the water's edge. Have a look at the sign that we had next to the tent. Was it safe to be there? I think so, just don't tell my Mother where I was.

The sign next to the tent. Would have camped in there? We like living on the edge!

Another sign, we like the bottom drawing of the croc eating a person.

The 'free' buffet

The local beauties near the pool waterfall.

After the obligatory breakfast we went to visit Nuralgie, an aborigine historic area nearby.

This is a cave where the aborigines used to live in this not so long ago. I couldn't stop thinking that this way of living is basically pre-historic. There is no evidence of any of the basic techologies that denote progress, like building a shelter, or even modifying a natural one, carving, metalurgy, farming, etc.



The paintings on the walls depict superstition and hunting skills, all their culture was based on hunter/gathering, no attempt was made to farm animals or working the land.

We then visited the Cultural Centre near yellow Waters. We were astonished to learn a few things there. One of the things that amazed us the most was how racist the aborigines were. apparently their tribes had different shades of skin colour, they had rules that certain colours can only marry certain other colours, any other mixing was forbidden.

The other thing that was interesting to learn was that they had different spears for different functions, for example there was a spear for hunting and another one for war. So to know the intention of an aborigine that is approaching you with a spear, all you need to do is look at the tip of the spear he is carrying, if it is the one for war, then start running or shooting; if it is one for hunting, then you have nothing to worry about.



They split the year in 6 seasons, and organised hunting based on that.



The toilets, we found funny how they depict women...

...and men

Here are the different type of spears

here are samples, the tip indicate the function of the spear

This indicates who can marry whom

These wheels (geared) indicate what marriages are acceptable and which ones are not, all based on the skin colour.

We saw this on many trees. The leaves are glued all together forming a type of cocoon. Does anyone know what this is? We didn't dare opening one to have a look.

The road out of Kakadu, nothing special, just the same landscape for hundreds of kilometers on end

And then we reached the Stuart Highway, and the massive Road Trains.

On the road we saw this truck filming for Whereis, we will need toc check, I think we were photographed on the road, too.