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.

Day 20 - Kakadu National Park (Yellow Waters)

Day 20 - Kakadu National Park (Yellow Waters)

10/8/2013

We camped late at night, but had time to book a sunrise crock cruise. The next morning we woke up very early and waited for a bus that took about 8 of us to the boats. It was still very dark and scary, as we knew that there are crocs everywhere.

What we saw from the boats was spectacular, the early fog slowly dissipated as the sun started to come out and the crocs all started appearing on the water surface.

trees in the fog

slowly the place is getting a bit of light

A lonely silouette emerging from the fog

There he is

It's a medium size croc, about 3-4 metres long. (big enough for me)

Get closer, if you dare...

Then we saw the birds, we did not expect such diversity and beauty. The birds were taking the spot over the crocs.

A bird of prey on the best hunting spot

The sun is coming out. Remember, there are hundreds of crocs in there...

A beautiful Kingfisher

Nice Kakadunian scenes

A sea eagle

A pelican

Sleeping birds. Too close to the water's edge. Croc's breakfast for sure...

And there he is waiting...

...and making eye contact...

Sometimes they are hard to see....

This bird is really funny. It lives at night mostly under water, then when the sun comes out, it stays on a tree like this, with the wings open to dry them.

Water lilies and their flowers

Not interested...

We ended up spending the rest of the day in Yellow Waters, we really liked the place and needed the rest.

We also booked the nigh time cruise, it started at 845PM. We didn't take any photos, but it was nice to navigate the same waters that we now knew, in the dark, the sounds were completely different. There was also an old aborigine lady on the boat telling us stories and aswering questions. Very interesting.

They did not use the stars for navigation, but for telling what time of the year it was, that way they knew where to go hunting.

Day 19 - Kakadu National Park

Day 19 - Kakadu National Park

9/8/2013

Today I prepared the bike for the trip. I installed 8 stainless steel marine hooks on it, so that now I can carry the bike in a completely different configuration. Before, when I was alone, I was carrying 2 bags outside of the boxes, one with the tent and the other with the mattress and sleeping bag, now I have an extra mattress and an extra sleeping bag, so I need a third bag. Additionally, now I cannot carry the bags on the rear seat, as my fiancee will be sitting there. The solution I came up with was to purchase 3 marine sturdy wet bags and install the hooks so I can attach 2 bags to the top of the panniers and another to the top of the rear box. This solution worked great, here is the final product. I also became very comfortable for the pillion as she now has a place to rest her arms.

I've heard all sort of comments about Kakadu; some told me not to bother, some that the best time to see it is just after the wet season. Anyway, I was too close to it not to give it a go. 

I have to say, the trip from Darwin to Kakadu is long an tedious, not much to see. I felt a bit dissapointed, it was also longer and hotter than I expected. Being this the first long trip for my fiancee, I tried to do as many rest stops as praticable, which made the trip even longer. The result was that it became dark and we were still about 150Km from Yellow Waters, our intended destination. We did the last 100 km at about 60kmh as we started to hear the 'jungle' awakening as soon as it got dark, I was expecting kangaroos, emus, buffalos, or even crocs to pop out in the middle of the road at any second.

During the trip we stopped at the Bark Hut Roadhouse. Very nice.

This is how they used to catch buffalos, the catcher would stand on this thing while the jeep was raging towards to bull. Not much EH&S awareness those days, I suppose.

There is something I do not understand. Maybe there is somebody out there that can explain this to me. At every National Park I keep hearing that the park and the resorts and everything else belongs to the 'traditional owners'. However, all the people working there are NOT aborigines. How does that work out? I would have expected that if it all belongs to them, that they would be in control. Am I missing anything?

We then reached Jabiru, where there is a hotel in the shape of a crocodile, however this can only be seen properly from the air.

See the croc shape on the photo, that's the hotel, we are now inside the head (reception)

A croc display inside the hotel

We left Jabiru very quickly as it was already dark and stil had many k's to Yellow Waters.

Day 18 - Darwin to Litchfield Park

Old note: Please accept my apologies, there are some technical issues with the 'compose' function of the blogger and I can't edit the text. Surely I must be doing something wrong. Tomorrow when I leave Kakadu, I will ring for some IT technical support. The mobile signal and internet here is horrendous.

8/8/2013 - Litchfield park

Here we are again. Finally ended up sorting the problem myself. Apparently Blogger does not support IE8 anymore, and what do you know? Windows XP does not support IE9. In other words, I need to upgrade to Windows 7. Bummer, that means that updating the blog while on this trip is going to be very difficult, as I have to rely of other people's laptops.

Anyway, here we go with the first day...

Today, we started the trip, this time is different, as I have company. I don't know how I did it, but I convinced my girlfriend to come with me for this second stage of the trip; from Darwin to Perth. I must have said something right, which comes as a complete surprise to me. Anyway, she is here and this will make the trip all more enjoyable.

The first day I picked up the bike, installed a few upgrades and we went to Litchfield National Park. On the way there, we stopped at Batchelor. Nice little town, luckily, we weren't blinking and so we didn't missed it. We saw an incredible sculpture there.

This castle is a sculpture created by one of the late residents of  Batchelor

We finally reached the entrance to the park.

We had plans to cover all the areas of the park that we could reach via sealed roads. There are a number of waterfalls, swimming holes, the magnetic termite mounds, etc.

We reached the magnetic termite mounds, these are incredible, in fact all termite mounds in the area are incredible, on the one hand you have the 'cathedral' mounds; these termites create gigantic mounds in the loose shape of a cathedral. Her is one of them.

Yes, I know! It doesn't reeeeaaaally look like a cathedral. You need to exercise your imagination.

There you go! a magnetic termite mound on the front and a 'cathedral' at the back. The magnetic one is over 2 metres high..

Magnetic mounds are apparently very special, there is only one type of termite that makes them like this. These mounds are flat, and they are always oriented from south to north. Many theories about why they do it like that, but nothing really plausible. I guess it just the way they like it!

Then we arrived at our first swimming hole and waterfall. We liked it so much that we ended up spending the rest of the day there and didn't see anything else in the park.

A nice walk to the falls and the rockhole. Recommended!

The walk is well maintained, with cute bridges over the creeks.

Finally the falls and the tourists, of course

We ended up seeing just one waterfall, I'd like to think that this one is the best of all the falls in Litchfield, if you know otherwise, please don't tell me!

Tomorrow to head for Kakadu.