Advertisement
Published: November 12th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Magnetic Termite Mounds
These mound only exist in the Lichtfield NP, nowhere else in the world!! they are build following the north-south exes, like a small thin wall, so that the front and the back of it face the sun during the whole day to stay warm... hey there!! now, after visiting the outback and seeing how hard the life can be because of the heat and the dryness, we got to the humidity (85%) combined with heat (41 C!). I now realize how much i've travelled, how big the distances have been and how different the landscape is after a day drive. I would rather say that australia is composed of many different countries!! by the way, that's the aboriginal way of seeing OZ. For them, australia is composed of different countries, with different languages and cultures, absolutly different the ones to the others. That's one of the problems for the Australian government, because it can not treat all of them equally, because they are all very very different!! by the way, since we passed alice springs, the population of aboriginal people is much higher, and we now see lots of them everywher, mostly not doing much, just sitting around.
We did this part of the trip on a 4x4 bus (!), 13 passangers and our guide (this time a woman). i still was in the same group with Sonja and kathia, a relieve, bc the rest of the group were manly boring girls...but what we
Cathedral Termite Mound
this one was over 6m high, that means more than 60 years old!! (1m every 10 years!). if the queen dies (she looks like a snale without house; the termites themself like ants, but are not relative to them at all) the termites of that mound die with her... saw these days was stunning, specially the possibility of swimming almost twice a day to refresh ourselves of that heat!!!
We left Darwin (wher eyou can see more than 30.000 lightings in 4 moths-wet season-, while in the rest of the world the average is 1000 per year!!) to get firstt to the Lichtfield National Park. This national park is a tablletop range..huge cliffs and flatlands. By the way, it is considered as a tropical savana woodlands, and not rainforest, because it only rains during the 4 monthys of the wet season. during therest of the year it get very dry.
We saw the huge termite mounds, some more than 6 metres high!!! there are more than 2000 different types of termites all over the world and one of them, the magnetic termites can just be seen here, in this park. nowhere else. Termites look like small ants, but actually dont have anything to do with them. their most close relative is the cockroach!!!! never thought that, eh?! and the mounds are solid like rock, survive floods, droughts and tornados every year. they are build up with soil on which the termite split and poo. These mounds used
Florence Falls
and we swam there!! oooooh brilliant!!! to be used during the first settlements of the Europeans for the pavement of the streets and the houses!! once smashed down, they took the smashed mounds and spread them out on the floor, watering them afterwards so that they got hard as stone. The termites of one of these mounds 'eat' at much grass as a cow per day to build up theis mounds!! good that the grass here grows 4cm per day!!!
We went to the FLORENCE WATERFALLS, some amazing waterfalls that fall down from the tabletop range. On the way down we saw a huge (around 4m long) Olive python!! impressive to have it less than a metre away of u, wild!!but this is not venomous...it struggles...the swim in the falls was amazing. u could see the fish swimming underneath ur legs! really really nice.
Afterward we did a cruise on the Mary River, where we saw lots and lots of wildlife!! from fresh and salt water crocs, to lots of types of birds, wallabies, fish...The corc were impressive, specially the big big ones, so close and so dangerous!! good to be in a boat!! But corcs can survive without eating anything during a whole
Olvie python!!!
a wild olive python next to the stairs to go down to the florence waterfalls!!!!! year!!! they are also the only animal that can gallop like a horse, with the 4 legs on the air ate the same time!! but of course only for a short distance, on whoich they can get to have a speed of 18km/h!!
We got to the Kakadu National Park in the afternoon, one of the biggest and most famous national parks in OZ. It's bigger than Wales and is considered as full-tropics. It is World Heritage listed by the UNESCO for two main reasons: bc of its incredible and diverse wildlife and its cultural interest bc of the Aboriginal rock art u can find there. And the park actually is veryimpressive. It was good to be surrounded by green plants after so many days driving through the outback..we passed the night in one of the camping (very similar as the ones during the whole trip up the outback), this time with thousands of insects flighing around and no nets that could prevent them of getting inside the tent...buaj! huge frogs everywhere! huge huge!
The next day we drove through a dirt road where army-exercices take place, where we saw wild horses and drove 90km/h!! it was great!!!
driving thourgh rivers
now that we still can...this is impossible during the wet season, which is just starting now..good that we had this huge 4x4 truck!! We did an hour walk to the MAGUK WATERFALL where we could have a swim in the plunge pool...well, it sound like we always did the same stuff, but it actually was really great to have all those swimms...In the afternoon we went to visit the famous rockart painting in the Noarlangie Rocks. Aboriginal people used to draw their experiences, or their stories on the rocks, painting onpainting years after years. The colour itself (well, theminerals of the colours) was absorbed by the rock, and therefore have lasted so long after so many years. impressive. there are more than 5000 art sight here in kakadu, and only 3 of them are open to public. the rest are sacred or secret and not even all aboriginal people are allowed to visit them.. only those who manage to have the 5 skills of knowledge can, and there are not so many of them left. It seems to me that the aboriginal culture is getting lost, that the new generations dont really know where to stick...complicated matter...
we passed the night at jabiru in a campground with great swimming pool!!! luxury!!!!
The last day (sunday) we drove very early to the
a wild croc!!
the mary river has one of the largest concentration of crocodiles in the world. we saw heaps of them, and some,like this one, reallyhuge. There were fresh and salt water crocs, so better not to have a swim here!! Jim JIm Falls, which were impressive but dissapointing bc there were no falls!!!!! we did a loooooong and nice walk under the shape, but i dont remember to have swet so much never!! incredible. we did swim to the 'falls' (a tiny tiny falls was actually falling down...drops) bc the plunge pool next to the falls is surrounded by rock so that croc dont have access during the dry season to that spot. very very nice. imagine those impressive rocks just on top of u while u r swimming!!!
on our way back to darwin we passed through an impressive storm with stunning lightnings...impressive!!!
Now (monday) back in Darwin i'm about to leave to the milingimbi islands to visit Amy, a girl i met in Paris last year and who's English teacher over there for aboriginal people. I'll stay there for the next 3 days and it surely will be amazing to be in a reserve where normally no turists have access!!! hope everything is fine in the getting-cold-Europe!!! here it is very very warm and humide. having a shower doesnt really have much sense!! 😉 i cant believe i just have a month left!! 😞 time passes
Maguk waterfalls
again, swimming!! i start mixing up all the waterfalls by too quickly!! well, take care my friends, talk soon!! MUAKS!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.177s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 19; qc: 67; dbt: 0.0714s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Josema
non-member comment
Hoooola!!
Hooola princesa! Cómo estás? Todo bien por lo que veo!! Este finde he estado con tu sister y nos hemosechado unas risas!! Un besote!! Muak!!