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Published: October 18th 2007
The final stop was in Kakadu National Park where we would spent 3 full days exploring. This park is the most popular in the area. It was amazing cultural and environmental sites. There is evidence showing that Aboriginal people have been living in the area for over 50,000 years. We'd be checking out paintings that have been dated back 10,000 years. That is 8,000 years before Christ which makes all the sites of Western Europe look young.
Because of the stereotypes and labels placed on Aboriginal people, the latter half of the trip would be spent educating. In the urban areas you see a picture of Aboriginal people only being drunks on the corners. This group is very small percentage and there is much more to there present day situation. We were able to talk with many local people who still live and maintain the area of Kakadu. The entire park actually belongs to the Aboriginals who lease it out to the Australian government. After the lease runs out, they could technically close the site to all visitors and start to use it again. The pictures of the rock paintings below range from 10,000 years old to 200 when the
Advanced Croc Warning System
If it bites the bouy, there are crocs in the area. Europeans landed.
We stopped at many of the major attractions including Jim Jim Falls, Twin Falls and Maguk Plunge Pools. Jim Jim was the most impressive. We hiked right to the major pool of the waterfall but there was no flow right now. In 8 weeks time, you wouldn't be able to even approach the pool because of the huge spray. The picture with all the water flow is what is looks like in the wet. It is the second highest falls in Oz reaching 205 meters. The river was surrounded by monsoon forests which provided a beautiful backdrop.
As we went to bed the second night we watched the lightning storms in the distance and making the conclusion they weren't headed our way. Because of the mosquitoes we were in tents at this point. At 1:00 am, Greg is yelling at everyone to get up and put on your rain fly. We throw ours on and toss our gear in the truck before climbing back in. Within 5 minutes of getting back in the truck the skies opened up. This heavy rain continued for 3 bloody hours. This was rain, thunder and lightning. I was in a
tent with Martin who is a big guy like myself. We had to zip up all the vent to keep the rain out. We knew right away this was going to be bad. It was still 80 degrees and humid out. Now we had no fresh air. Pretty soon we were both dripping sweat, even my shoulders were sweating. We couldn't do anything to help. The inside of our tent basically created its own weather system with legit water drips from the humidity condensing. Going outside for fresh air would of soaked you to the bone. I was up at 6am with only 2 hours of sleep. We got 3 inches in 3 hours.
On the way our of Kakadu we stopped at a wildlife cruise where crocs were often spotted. They were everywhere in this billabong. They guide spotted a big one the day before that we hoped to spot. There were freshies and salties all over the place. We saw a 8' freshwater croc that was one of the largest our guide had seen. Then we saw our big boy. It was a 4 meter (13') croc swimming right in front of us. As we followed him
down the river he challenged a smaller 8' salties for territory. The smaller one immediately showed submission and made a run for it. A small chase followed with water being splashed everywhere. The little guy got away, but the big guy got his area back. Pretty dramatic, like a scene from Animal Planet. When I play back the events in my head, it always comes out in a Steve Irwin accent. After that it was back to Darwin for some well needed rest...maybe.
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