Kakadu
Trip Start
Sep 08, 2007
1
4
17
Trip End
Dec 23, 2007
Pine Creek, Australia
Thursday, September 13, 2007
After getting over the disappointment of our 4 day tour being cancelled, we got up at 5am and set off on our slightly shorter 3 day tour into Kakadu National Park. The park is one of only a few in the world which is recognised for its cultural and ecological treasures. First stop was a billabong near the Mary River, where our guide left us with a croc expert for a boat cruise down the billabong. It was teeming with life and a great moment when we saw our first 'saltie'. It was about 3.5 metres long and it cruised past the side of the boat just ten feet away! Got a good photo of a freshwater croc as well, which you don't see many of in that particular billabong cos the all get eaten buy the 'salties'. shed loads of birds as well.
The rest of the day included a visit to the Aboriginal Bowali visitor centre, where I only managed to read a few sentences of the info on each board before getting pissed off with the flies and heat, and giving up - was still interesting tho! Nourlangie rock was next where there was a load of Aboriginal art work.
Our guide was a zoologist called Rhys and he really knew his stuff so we learnt a lot from him.
Day 2 - first was the walk to Jim Jim falls (or Jim Jim not falling in this case) which was knackering but well worth it despite the lack of falling water. Great swim in the plunge pool at the bottom! Twin falls was also spectacular but swimming was banned due more to economics than crocs.
Both nights we slept under the stars and the second night we were just 200 yards from sandy billabong which is highlypopulated with salties! On the night walk we used a high powered torch to spot the croc's eyes on the water while we stood on the bank. It took quite a while to prise Emma from my arm after this. Our guide also chased and caught a snake which we got to have a close look at. He wasn't sure how poisonous it was which was quite funny.
On the third day we did a load of swimming at secluded creeks and i ended up scratched and bruised after many failed attempts at climbing up one of the rock faces overlooking the creeks. It was all worth it when i made it and jumped back into the deep water.
There wer 14 of us on the tour, comprising10 different nationalities - we all got on great after a few beers from the eskie.
Another highlight was seeing a dingo just a few metres from our groundsheet in the middle of the night.
After getting back from the tour we had a good Italian meal in Darwin with the other from our tour and then crashed out ready for another early start to Litchfield. This was just a one day tour which included the jumping crocodile cruise on Alligator river - awesome! The biggest croc we saw was 6 metres long, 1 tonne and roughly 100 years old - nicknamed hannibal! He couldn't even be bothered to go for the meat dangled in front of his face so he'd probably had a substantial meal quite recently. - lazy git!
Sorry it's taken a while to do this- we're in Rockingham now and all's well, Emma will fill you in on The Alice and The rock!
Litchfield was much busier than Kakadu mainly because it's much easier to get to from Darwin. It had nice spots for swimming but we both preferred Kakadu.
Comments
me again
just to say - photos are to follow but most are not in digita; format yet so it will only be a couple fom this trip.
Our Ayers rock ones are good tho and will be on within the week.
Croc century?
Unless my sense of humour is broken today, I presume you're exaggerating on the 100 years? As Google tells me that would be a world record for crocs. :p
Re: Croc century?
That's what they told us, may it's in dog years?