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Published: September 28th 2006
Kakadu National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage site and Australia's largest national park, not to mention the backdrop to parts of "Crocodile Dundee". It encompasses a variety of different habitats from wetlands to sandstone escarpments, and boasts over 10,000 species of insect, a third of Australia's bird species, and more reptile species than can be found in all of Europe, in amongst umpteen other superlative facts. It also has a large population of crocodiles, in particular the notorious salt water or estuarine croc.
I'd signed up for a 3 day/2 night camping trip to Kakadu, to sample its charms. The tour was led by Darren, a local Aboriginal who thought the 35C temperatures and humidity were a bit nippy. The rest of the group were Antonio (genuine surfer dude from San Diego), James and Maya (Canadian couple), Helmut (a surprisingly old (47 - I thought he was my age) Austrian who spoke little English and had the misfortune to be on a tour where no-one spoke German), Clodagh (Irish), and Emanuele (Italian). We were lucky that 2 places on the tour hadn't been taken up, as it would've been extremely cramped with 2 more pairs of legs in the
back of the Landcruiser.
Our first stop was at a beach just outside of Darwin, to try our hand at several Aboriginal skills. We made string by repeated twisting of strips of bark from an acacia tree, on which we hung shells to form necklaces. The beach then echoed to a symphony of parping as we blew inexpertly on some didgeridoos. Didgeridoos were named by a European, supposedly because that was the sound he thought they made. They were originally common only in the northern part of Australia, but in the 80s and 90s were adopted by Aborigines throughout the country as a symbol of a shared identity. Little skill is required to produce a note (simply blow through your lips like a horse while jamming your mouth firmly against the mouthpiece), but varying the note by changing your tongue position, and doing circular breathing, require significant practice.
Next we tried our luck at throwing spears. Instead of throwing them like you would a javelin, you obtain greater range by using something called a spear-thrower. This is a simple device that extends the effective length of your arm, and hence the torque you can generate with the throwing
action. Though the group showed limited accuracy (2 hits out of several hundred attempts), it was almost comical how easy it was to send the spear arcing over a clump of distant trees. Finally we tried making fire, via the technique of rotating a wooden rod rapidly in a hole in another piece of wood. Hot and strenuous work, and only Helmut was able to come up with a lick of flame.
Unfortunately getting to, and around, Kakadu requires a great deal of driving - we did ~1,200km in the 3 days. One bonus is that there's no speed limit on many Northern Territory roads, so we were able to cruise at 130km/h on the bitumen sections. Many of the sites are only accessible by 4WD, requiring bum-numbing stretches along dusty, uneven roads. (Un?)fortunately the trick for dealing with the corrugated sections is to zoom over them at high speed, making for a wild ride. Even though this is the driest part of the Dry season, with the build-up leading to the Wet season only 6 weeks away, there were still creeks to be forded, one of them being deep enough to rise above the rear door sill.
Our first stop in the park was for a boat cruise in some wetlands, on a shallow draught metal boat piloted by an old chap called Ted. He knew plenty about the environment, and pointed out assorted birds, spiders, trees, etc. We saw a couple of crocs from the boat but it was too hot a day to see much activity. Apparently crocs function best when the temperature is between 30C and 33C, so it's outside that range they try to either warm up or cool down. Since it was about 35C, they were trying to cool off.
Some more info about crocs. Kakadu has populations of both "salties" (salt water, or estuarine, crocs which confusingly inhabit salt water and fresh water environments), and "freshies" (fresh water crocs). Freshies are harmless (a relative term for anything possessing a mouth full of spiky teeth) and will only attack if provoked. Salties, on the other hand, are aggressive killing machines that have perfected the art to such an extent that they have barely changed in form in the last 200 million years. Growing up to 6m in length and 1,000kg in weight (though the largest recorded in Australia was nearly 11m
long - measure it out to get an idea just how monstrous that is), they are unremittingly unfriendly, not even tolerating their own species except at mating time. A hand-reared saltie will view its rearer as food rather than a substitute mother.
Salties are amazingly sensitive to vibrations in water - they can detect a dingo's tongue lapping the surface of the river from 300m away. Two retractable "antennae" under their snout can be used to home in on the source of the vibrations, with the croc changing its swimming direction until the vibrations reach both antennae simultaneously - this means the target is dead ahead. Their jaws have a crushing pressure equal to about 3,000 pounds per square inch (roughly 30 times that of a large dog), and if one took a fancy to your arm, it wouldn't bite it clean through - rather, it would grab the arm in its jaws then perform "death rolls" until the arm was twisted off at the socket. Salties learn to recognise repetitive behaviour, which is why if you are camping and intend fetching water from a saltie-inhabited river, you should vary the time and place when/where you go to. The
one comforting fact about salties is that there have been remarkably few human fatalities in Australia caused by them, but you need to be aware of safe places to swim in areas like Kakadu. 4 years ago, a tourist was killed when taking an ill-advised dip in a saltie-infested billabong.
Unfortunately the flow of useful information from Ted came to a grinding halt when the subject of Steve Irwin came up. Irwin's hands-on approach to wildlife flew in the face of the whole "Observation not interaction" maxim that many naturalists prefer, and it was clear that Ted was not in the pro-Irwin camp. I believe "Fucking wanker" would be a verbatim quote. The anti-Irwin rant consumed the rest of the trip.
Our second stop within the park was in the north-eastern corner, to see the Aboriginal rock paintings at Ubirr. These are richly detailed, though the colour palette is limited to black/white/red/yellow - the reason why some of the paintings appear to be a jumble of red smudges is that the red pigment is hardiest, and may remain even when the black/white/yellow have been substantially weathered. Many of the paintings depict animals, with one rock even showing a
Didgeridoo lesson
L to R: James, Helmut, Clodagh, Emanuele, Antoniovirtual menu of local wildlife. Poignantly, there are also paintings of thylacines (Tasmanisan tigers - now extinct), as well as men with guns (the arriving Europeans who would change Aboriginal life for ever). Some of the art on head-scratchingly inaccessible surfaces is viewed as the work of Mimis, creator beings who thought nothing of taking the top off a rock formation, dashing off a quick painting on it, then plonking it down again for future generations to wonder about its provenance.
It's customary that if a high-status Aborigine in the community dies, then photos of them are covered up and their name isn't spoken for 2-3 years (instead they're referred to obliquely as, for example, "that old man from Cannon Hill"). We saw some examples of photos having been covered up, on boards that contained quotes from the deceased.
From Ubirr Lookout, we had a great view over to the Arnhem Land Plateau, which is the oldest piece of the earth's crust above sea-level. Arnhem Land itself is an Aboriginal reserve into which it's impossible to go as an independent tourist, unless you're invited.
We camped the first night at Jabiru, in an excellent campsite that had
Snake bird drying off
Their feathers are not oily, so they have less buoyancy to fight when fishing showers superior to many hostel ones. With the night air balmy, and no mosquito menace in the area, we were able to simply sleep using swags (a swag is essentially a sleeping bag with a built-in mattress), and I didn't even need to get into that until being clad only in my undies started to feel a bit fresh at ~4AM. Being able to stare straight up at the star-spangled sky with no intervening tent was comfortably the best sleeping experience I've had in Australia.
Day 2 was devoted to waterfall visits. Antonio kindly offered the group the use of his baby powder, for anyone worried about "crotch rot" in the humidity. Twin Falls was our first stop. We had a short but steep and sweaty climb to the top, then walked along the dry creek bed for about 1km until we came to some pools in which we could swim. It was with much relief that I stripped down to my trunks and waded in to the blissfully cool water. (One of the more disconcerting things about swimming in Kakadu is that you'll see warning signs about salties, then end up swimming just a couple of hundred metres
away - the thought does cross your mind that if an unfit, sweaty, pasty Englishman can travel that distance then surely so can a large, strong, hungry croc.)
Of course, we were dripping with perspiration again within minutes of starting the hike down. At the bottom, we hopped on a boat that took us as far up the gorge as was navigable, then hiked the remaining distance to the plunge pool while Darren made lunch in a shady spot. Twin Falls looked excellent, even at a fraction of its Wet season volume, and the sandy beach around the plunge pool was enticing. Less appealing was the knowledge that umpteen salties were lurking within, so we were unable to take advantage of what would have been a superb swimming spot.
Next up was Jim Jim Falls, with only the merest trickle of a flow, but the plunge pool was enormous and croc-free, and it was an amazing feeling to simply float in the middle of it with rock walls soaring on 3 sides.
Our campground for night 2 was near Yellow Water, and the complete opposite to our previous night. The only facility was a long-drop toilet, and
the plague of mosquitos in the area meant that tents were compulsory. The gallons of repellent that I applied didn't seem to help much, as every available skin surface took some damage.
During the day, Darren had provided an excellent demonstration of animal spotting and capture. As we were driving along, he suddenly stopped the Landcruiser, got out, told us to follow him, then approached a tree, looking quickly round the left and right of it. He then reached round the tree blindly, and brought out a frill-necked lizard. Impressive stuff.
The final day began with a trip to Yellow Water, where Darren lectured us on the wetlands, then we had a visit to the Warradjan Aboriginal Cultural Centre. The Cultural Centre expanded on a number of things I'd already heard about, but the only air-conditioned part was the shop, a clever ploy by the owners that resulted in me buying some postcards. Lunch at Barramundi Gorge was followed by a visit to a cathedral termite mound, home to several hundred million termites and an impressively large structure for such small creatures - apparently a building that had the same relative size to humans as a termite mound
does to termites would extend several kilometres beyond the earth's atmosphere.
Our final swim was at Maguk, where there was a small waterfall and a large croc-free pool (well, there was a resident freshie but he apparently keeps to himself). This was further enlivened by some other visitors providing one of Kakadu's first demonstrations of topless rock climbing.
That marked the end of the activities in Kakadu, and the long haul back to Darwin was accompanied by the sound of gentle snoring from 7 weary tourists.
The final act of the trip was to have a group dinner at the Vic, a Darwin establishment whose salubriousness can perhaps be guessed at by the fact that it has a theme night called "Tits Out Tuesday". Ludicrously (for such a place), we were told that people wearing thongs (i.e. flip-flops) would be thrown out later in the evening, a dress code that was never enforced. Dinner was followed by drinks and a migration to the downstairs dancefloor, with arrival in my bunk only occurring somewhere in the region of 4AM, tired but happy (possibly even merry) after 3 fun days.
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Kathy
non-member comment
rock art
Irecently visited Kakadu but didn't get to Ubirr, thankyou for putting this up I haven't seen it on any other of the many sites I have looked at so far