May 9-13, 2008: Top End Adventures

Friday, we left Broome and flew Darwin. The flight was from Broome to Kunanurra, then on to Darwin. We were amazed that there were snacks and beverages served on both flights, each less than 2 hours long. We almost missed both flights. Flight # 1 we were told to wait at gate #2, our flight departed from gate #1 and we didn’t hear the announcement. Flight #2, they told us to get off the plane and they would have us re-board in 20-25 minutes. So we sat down right outside of the gate that we came through. We sat there for awhile, when we realized that there was no one else sitting with us. We had to go inside to the terminal and go through security again and board through a different gate. Gee, one would think we had never flown before. J We arrived in Darwin too late to really see much of the city that evening. We will hopefully spend Wednesday doing some sightseeing; it looks like a very nice city.

Saturday morning we boarded a big coach and joined about 20 others for a 3 day tour of the Kakadu National Park. This amazing place covers a huge portion of the Northern Territory. It is jointly run by the national government of Australia and the Aboriginal people of this region. We enjoyed this very rugged area of woodland-savanna scenery as we drove throughout the day. We started this adventure by taking a cruise on the Adelaide River seeing the jumping crocodiles. What a sight to see these big creatures leaping out of the water for the chunks of pork meat that they hung out over the boat on a big pole. My favorite was old Bogart; he must have been 12-15 feet long. His teeth were pretty snagily looking, his skin was quite scared up and he only had 1 leg. The other 3 were stumps, had been bitten off in skirmishes to assert his dominance of the area he lives in; looks like he has had a pretty tough life. We then went out to the airfield and boarded a small plane for a 30 minute flight over the park. We flew over the huge sandstone rock escarpments; along the Adelaide River, and the Alligator River (misnamed by an early explorer who thought that the crocs were alligators); over many billabongs, and across the fields of trees, bush and wet lands. After our flight we headed to Ubirr and walked among the rocks and saw some very outstanding examples of ancient Aboriginal rock paintings. Many of these are thought to be in the area of 10,000 years old, some right next to those might be less than 100 years old. Each picture had a story to be used by the locals to teach their children the morals of life. Each mural has up to 6 stories, but only the first and most primary are ever told to the “white man”. The walk was a bit taxing, steep climbs over rocks and weather was very warm, but worth the struggle and sweat. We spent the night in Gagudju at the Crocodile Holiday Inn. This hotel looks like a crocodile from the air, very unique indeed.

Sunday – Mother’s Day, we rejoined our tour mates and drove through the Nourlangie Area and saw many more of the rock paintings. We also enjoyed some beautiful views from the top of the rocks that we hiked. As we drove along the roads there were a lot fires burning. These are purposely set by the parks people to burn the grass that grows up and poses a bigger fire danger if it is left to grow. The Aboriginals say that this is just “cleaning up” the bush land. The parks attempt to burn the grass every 3 years to try and keep it in check. Today’s cruise was along the Yellow waters Billabong and River. We again saw quite a few Crocs and an amazing number of birds. We saw the Jabaroo, which is Australia’s only stork. We stayed in the town of Katherine in a small little hotel.

Monday morning we headed for Nimiluk National Park (Katherine Gorge). We had another great boat ride. This was a breakfast cruise; we saw the sun rise up over the beautiful red sandstone walls of the gorge. We spent the afternoon taking a cooling dip in the beautiful Edith Falls Billabong. We drove back this afternoon and spent the night in Darwin.

Tuesday morning we set out on a day trip to Litchfield National Park. This is an area west of Kakadu. Again amazing bush land. We saw more termite mounds. The large cathedral mounds were incredible. The tallest ones appeared to be 16-18 feet tall. Even more amazing is that there is more of the structure under the ground. The mounds are made from the soil that the termites excavate out of the tunnels that they dig. The mounds serve as air conditioning and food storage. We also saw magnetic termite mounds, which looked more like flat panels, 4 x 4 feet in size – with their walls getting the morning and afternoon sun. There are more termites by weight than any other living creatures on earth. We took in 3 waterfalls this afternoon, we went to Tolmer and Wangi Falls; we couldn’t swim there because of Crocs. We did take a quick dip in the Florence pool, felt really nice and cool because it was very warm this afternoon. We got back to Darwin this afternoon – we are finished with this wonderful Top End Tour.