Kakadu (and the heat goes on...)

Onwards to Kakadu,the World Heritage tropical wetlands area where we were immediately struck by the indigenous names populating the area – an awful lot of “uks” up that way such as “Bukbukluk”, which we found kind of neat. Some place names though just defied pronunciation. Wrap your tonsils around “Malabanjbanjdju” or “Kunbarlianjnja” if you can.

We stayed at the Cooinda Resort Park as it was the only one we could pronounce. This is right next door to the Yellow River Billabong where there are copious boat tours of the wetlands – not to be missed. We did two tours in fact, one at sunset and one at sunrise – both very good. Some very big crocodiles lurking in that water, plus a profusion of birds (280 species we are told by the guide) – we might have seen twenty. Perhaps the others were still flying in for peak tourist season.

Nourlangie Rock has a pleasant walk to a series of sites containing indigenous rock art from 1000 to 5000 years old. Some excellent looking art – well it’s not art – it’s a series of instruction manuals about how to survive, handed down to those who know how to use it (but is it art?). A tour bus full of septuagenarians was there when we were and these poor oldies were pulling themselves up over the rocks in 35C heat to view the artwork thinking “We’re a long way from Lake Macquarie Mavis!)

From Nourlangie we went to the small town of Jabiru for lunch and managed to get ourselves lost thanks to town planning based on Canberra circles and some locals’ idea of humour through rotating signposts 180 degrees. Oh ha ha. We drove another 30 kilometres or so to Ubirr where there is a hill that looks over Kakadu and out to Arnhem Land, plus more impressive indigenous rock art. We had the good fortune to meet a ranger up there doing his patrol and spent a good thirty minutes listening to his stories about the area. Really interesting. We had noticed that a lot of trees had brown bands painted on them and he told us that a highly respected member of the local community had passed away (no names though, that’s the culture) and the trees had been banded as a sign of respect and to keep his strong spirit from affecting visitors (like us). The area would then be cleansed at a later date, when his spirit would be taken from the area to a “better place”.

               View from the top of Ubirr (you might need to click on this to see its full glory)

But after hot days, the resort’s pool beckoned and we responded to it. The first fires burning off the drying grasses had just been lit and as we drove through the smoke we could feel our poor bodies drying out too. Cold drinks from the bistro and bar assisted us no end. It’s hot up here. I don’t think we’ll be seeing any winter until at least June the way we’re going.