We arrived in Darwin early August, where once again we stayed with friends, Chris and Lyn Delaney. We had a number of things to do in preparation for our onward journey to the west, so after having the car serviced and a new set of tyres put on we were ready. Our son Dale arrived to join us for the Darwin to Broome leg. So we were all ready to set forth, our first stop with Dale was Kakadu.
So we left Darwin with Jabaru as our first stop, we stayed in the Lakeview Caravan Park. Not sure why it was called Lakeview as we appeared to be a long way from any Lake. After we set up camp we headed out to the East Alligator Region and Ubirr on the Arnham Land escarpment, where we saw an amazing rock art gallery and some smaller sites nearby depicting the delicate spirit figures of the region. We managed to be in the right spot at the right time for 2 of the ranger talks, one on creation and kinship – rainbow serpent, the other people and floodplains.
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| Ubirr, on the Arnham Land escarpment |
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| Ubirr |
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| Dale at Ubirr |
We were up early the next morning to go on a Ranger guided walk at Yellow Water, a spectacular wetland area with prolific birdlife. As we misread the what’s on guide we were late and missed the Rangers talk so we just wondered around on our own but we did get to see some of the birds of the wetlands.
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| Marty & Dale Yellow Water wetlands |
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| One of the many birds in the wetlands |
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| Egrets in the wetlands |
Then we visited the Warradjan Aboriginal Cultural Centre, which provides detailed information about Aboriginal culture in Kakadu. Then on to Maguk (mar-gook) plunge pool, a 2km return walk through monsoon forest and along a sandy and rocky creek to a small waterfall. Here we ate our lunch and then cooled off in the plunge pool.
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| Maguk (mar-gook) plunge pool |
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| Just cooling off in the plunge pool |
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| The water is just so clear you can see the fish swimming around you |
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| Marty & Dale climb up the the top for a dip in another pool om top of the falls |
On our way back to Jabiru we stopped at Nourlangie rock, on the Arnhem Land escarpment, this is one of Kakadu’s main Aboriginal rock-art areas. We also caught another ranger talk.
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| Nourlangie rock |
Day 3 in Kakadu and we were up early and on time for the Ranger guided walk, living with Rainforest and billabong, this was a 3.6 km loop walk around the Mamukala wetlands.
In the late afternoon we went back to the Mary River Wetlands, to do a sunset cruises on the Corroboree Billabong, this was fantastic, while on the cruise we got to see an array of bird life including, Jabiru, Jacana, Egrets, Sea eagles and many other birds and of course some crocodiles. The billabong also had a fantastic display of water lilies and lotus lilies, they were all just so lovely.
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| Jabiru on Corroboree Billabong |
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| Jacana (bird) walking on the Lilly pads Corroboree Billabong |
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| Lotus Lillies Corroboree Billabong |
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| another Crock |
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| Water buffelo Corroboree Billabong |
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| Sunset over the Corroboree Billabong |
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| Crocodile at Corroboree Billabong |
Well this one trip put a very abrupt end to our Kakadu experience as on our way back to Jabiru, we were unlucky enough to hit a wallaby, that put a hole into our radiator, so then our night was spent, making arrangements to get the car towed somewhere, to have repairs done. This took us a couple of days to sort out and then we had a two and a half week wait for new parts to arrive and the repair work to be done.
We decided to not hang about in Darwin so we asked our very good friend Chris if he could tow our trailer out to Litchfield National Park.
We camped at Batchelor, making this our base, as we were able to get phone and internet coverage here.
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| Brogonfly on the guy rope |
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| A little green tree frogpaying us a nightly visit |
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| What a great way to spend a hot afternoon, in the shade with the sprinkler on. |
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| what can I say |
Each day we could drive our hire car to one of the waterfalls to enjoy the plunge pools and creeks.
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| Just relaxing at wangi Falls, I think this was just after 1.5 km walk |
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| Under the water fall at Wangi Falls |
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| Florence Falls |
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| Magnetic Termite mounds |
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| Just had to climb the tree so he could jump in. |
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| Just relaxing in the spa |
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| Some never grow up |
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| Boys will be boys, they see a rock wall so they have to climb it and then jump off into the water |
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| at the top of the cascades |
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| The Cascades water hole with the lizard sunning it self on a log |
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| a nice deep hole to jump into |
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| Florence Falls |
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| what a great pkace for a swim plenty of room to make a splash |
Dale brought a tennis ball with him which provided hours of fun as he and Marty tested each other’s hand eye coordination by trying to catch the ball as they dived into the various pools.
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| Playing ball at Buley water hole |
To add some extra interest to our stay Dale introduced us to the world of goecaching,
Each day we would head out with the relevant information saved onto a mobile phone, and then we would, tramp and scramble around in the bush looking for the various caches that have been hidden in and around Litchfield. Some were quiet easy to find within a short walking distance from the car while others would be a little further and a bit more challenging, in all we found would have found 31 caches ranging in size from large ammo tins, coffee tins, lunch boxes and micro magnetic capsules. But it was all fun and the reward after a find was to spend time playing around in one of the plunge pools.
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| I found this one |
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| Snake Creek Armament Depto |
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| goecaching |
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| Found another one |
The geocaching also allowed us to see places that otherwise we would not have seen including some great WW11 relic near Adelaide River. Whilst in the Adelaide River area we also visted Robin Falls. Some of the finds involved paddling a canoe around Lake Bennett, of which I opted out of so I just sent the boys off, with I enjoyed a quiet cool drink in the air conditioned bar.
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