Kakadu National Park

---

We picked up the motor home this morning, it was a bit bigger than we thought it would be. There was an instructional video to watch to show you where all of the important things were. The first thing they showed was the driver saying in Australia the steering wheel is on the right side of the car and we drive on the left hand side of the road. We had a bit of a laugh at that.

With all of the paper work sorted out we set off to Kakadu. As often happens with us and caravans, 10 k’s down the road, something fell off, nothing major, just one of the rear panels of the motor home, but we did have to turn around and go back to Britz for a repair. 10 mins and a couple of pop riverts later we were back on the road again.

Since April this year all non Northern Territory residences over the age of 16 have to pay $25 entry into the park, so Bowali Visitor Centre was our first stop so that we could buy our passes. Passes purchased we continued to Cooinda where we stayed our first night.

Due to the heat and humidity we decided on an early start today, so that we could do the couple of walks we wanted to do, in the coolish part of the day. At Nourlangie we did the 1.5km walk that took us to an ancient Aboriginal shelter and several art sites. It also included a steep climb to reach a lookout which had some really good views of Kakadu’s escarpment. The other walk we did was Mirrai Lookout which was a 3.5km steep walk to the top of Mt Cahill, from the lookout platform there was really good views of some of the wetlands and stone country. We had planned to go to Gunlom, but after asking some of the locals we decided to give it a miss as the road was very corrugated and rough at the moment. We continued on to our next overnight stop at Pine Creek.

Pine Creek is a little town full of history. During construction of the Overland Telegraph Line, posthole diggers discovered gold, with this find it then leading to the goldrush of 1871. Pine Creek became a busy little mining town, and around 1885 there was about 200 Europeans and 4000 Chinese working in the goldfields. There are still some original buildings left in the town for tourists to visit. Another interesting site to look at is the old railway station, which has been turned into a museum, and the steam locomotive which has been restored. Next door is the Miners Park which has mining machinery from the old mines in the Pine Creek area, these displays are very well signed and give you a very good picture of what life on the Goldfields would have been like.

---