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Published: September 29th 2009
Morning
Hillary enjoying her bread early in the morning.The morning of Sunday, September 06, was the start of our trip to Kakadu National Park. We were up nice and early with a few other backpackers, and piled into a heavy duty looking truck. Due to the off-roading, we needed a 4 wheel drive truck, and let’s just say this thing looked like a tank.
Our first stop was a crocodile cruise. I know what you’re thinking. And yes, there does seem to be a lot of these in Australia. But what can I say? Tourists like crocodiles! However, this one was not a jumping crocodile cruise. In fact, our tour guide was quite opposed to the very idea, and let’s just say he had a few choice words for one Steve Irwin (more like a rant). But he knew a good deal about the billabong we were touring. This was a land locked body of water, which got it’s water from the wet season when the plains flood, and then recede forming the billabong. Lots of animals, like fresh and salt water crocs, tons of birds and plenty of fish.
We did a lot of driving this first day. Much like the Uluru trip, we basically drove
4WD
The truck was quite comfortable inside. to the furthest point in our tour, and then started making our way back slowly. In fact, a lot of things were similar between the two tours, like preparing our own food, sleeping outdoors (in a tent if you’d like) and a lot of walking!
Kakadu National Park has roughly 5000 rock art sites. We checked out Ubirr, one of the bigger and more accessible sites. Aboriginal rock art is interesting because of how attached it is to its context. The drawings tell stories of the local area, which later generations are able to use to learn about the past. The animals drawn will be of the local wildlife, the spirits drawn will explain how the land was formed, and the people drawn will show of their exploits. One unfortunate thing for us though is that sometimes the stories are only relevant at the moment they are drawn, so later drawings are simply drawn right on top of the last. This makes learning about the oldest stories pretty difficult.
Our camp site that night was in this little campground. Luckily we had showers and toilets, which is always a plus. And the moon was really bright that night,
4WD - 2
But the outside was built like a tank. making it really easy to get around in the dark! We finally got to bed around 10 or 11pm. Plenty of time for a good sleep, if there weren’t so many mosquitoes (or “mozzies”, to the Australians).
Kevin (and Hillary)
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