Blogs from Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory, Australia, Oceania

Visiting Kakadu had been high on our bucket list for some time, and we finally had the opportunity to tick that box. Kakadu National Park is located 171 kms south east of Darwin and is the second largest national park in Australia. The park is managed by the aboriginal traditional owners jointly with Parks Australia, and is highly ecologically and biologically diverse, hosting a wide range of habitats and flora and fauna. We checked into Aurora Kakadu Lodge at Jabiru and after setting up our caravan, we enjoyed a cool swim in the resort like pool. Our first destination the next morning was to head to the famous Cahills Crossing, a causeway across the East Alligator River, where large saltwater crocodiles gather at each high tide to feast on mullet and barramundi as they seek to ... read more

I’m woken at the crack of dawn by noise that would wake the dead - thousands of birds in chorus in the trees around the hotel. I wonder how Issy can possibly still be asleep. I check to make sure that she is actually still with us, but all good - the snoring was a bit of a giveaway. I decide to take the opportunity for an early morning trip out to the Mamukala Wetlands. On the off chance that Issy stirs before I get back I leave her a note to tell her where I've gone. At least now if I get taken by a croc, she’ll know where to tell the searchers to look. I arrive at the car park to find that I’m the only person here. I read a large crocodile warning ... read more

Flying into Darwin we noticed it’s a lot greener and thankfully hotter. As we were walking through the airport to claim our luggage there were cameras everywhere. I started wondering how they knew we were arriving today .... then the cameramen started to get excited as we were walking towards them but they weren’t looking at us, the bloody Parramatta Eels football team were behind us ... ? After getting our bags we hopped into a taxi so we could pick up our traveling home for the next week ... a Maui 2 berth Camper. I was a little shocked by the size of the camper and worried it would be to hard to drive. After a lesson on all the vans features I was let loose on the roads. We started easy and headed for ... read more

Day 18 - Jabiru last full day Today we had booked to go on a morning cruise on the East Alligator River. Now this was about 40mins away from our camp and was very close to Cahill’s crossing. We left early enough to allow us to find the place, have a cup of coffee and also cross Cahill’s crossing and still have time to spare. Paul reckons if we had of been any earlier we would catch yesterday’s tour. Anyhow they don’t appreciate my organisational skills. That is my story. The tour nearly didn’t start off at all. The tour is run by the Local Aboriginal council and the aboriginals had two deaths in the last week. This means they need to attend all of the sorry time rituals irrespective of whether they have jobs or ... read more

Day 16 - Jabiru Today we decided we would take a trip to Jim Jim Falls. Now we were told by the caravan park receptionist and by the visitor centre staff that the road into Jim Jim Falls was corrugated and that the 50km Trip would be slow. Well they didn’t tell us everything did they. Firstly the road was graded for half the way, the first half, the rest of the way was heavily corrugated. They were so bad they shake your eyeballs out of their sockets. Going slow was worst so we travelled at an average of about 80km going in. I found that going back it was much smoother if I drove at 100km to 110km remembering this was loose gravel. Let me just say my car lived up to its reputation of ... read more