23^rd September

We left the motel and stopped to fill our diesel tanks before heading out to Kakadu National Park.  The park entrance is around 137km out of Darwin.  It’s Australia’s largest national park, just around 20,000 square kilometres in size.  That is just about one fifth the size of Iceland!  So there is a lot of driving required to get anywhere in the park!   Prior to entering the park we stopped at a another wetlands information centre, called “Window on the Wetlands”.  It’s just past the Fog Dam, which we had visited the day before.  It’s built into the side of a hill with good views across the surrounding areas.  The have lots of information and displays inside, so we ambled through.  Kylie went almost crazy, wanting to jump into every display, so I eventually shoved her into the mouth of a Croc.  She became very quiet after that!  She did want to use the provided binoculars to look at the scenery!  As we walked away from the wetlands centre we noticed a couple of birds arguing in the tree along the pathway.  I shot a few photos and it turns out that these were birds called a Yellow Backed Oriol.  A very pretty bird.

After entering the park boundary, we were advised that we needed a park pass that would cost $25 per person.  We were told that the first place to acquire the pass would be at the Aurora Kakadu resort.  We stopped there of course, just to be told that, “Sorry out of tickets!”  So onward we went without tickets and made our first stop in Kakadu at the Mamukala Wetlands bird hide.  This is an area where one can look over a large swamp lake and view all the native birds.  This is one of the primary reasons for Kakadu.  It’s a huge wetland and refuge for birds.  Of course they had the mandatory Croc warning as we were to see all over the park! 

The view at Mamukala bird hide (A small house with windows over the wetland, so the birds get used to it and don’t worry about humans) was just stunning.  I took a lot of photos.  We saw a number of birds, the biggest being the Magpie Goose. 

From there we headed to Jabiru, which is a small village inside Kakadu.  There we visited the Bowali information centre and managed to finally buy our Kakadu tickets.  After having ambled through the display we headed out to Ubirr.  Firstly to see the Aboriginal rock art painted on the sandstone rock formations and also to camp overnight.  It’s about 37km drive from the main Kakadu road.  We got there in the afternoon and began by camping our tent.  Then we drove to the Ubirr visitor car park and went for the walk amongst the sandstone blocks to view the rock art.  One of the rangers was just about to do a talk on the rock art, so we went straight there.  The ranger provided a lot of background to the visible rock art and the reasons for it having been done.  Some of the rock art is pretty old, whereas others are fairly recent.  The motivation the Aboriginals had for doing the rock art varied.  In some cases it was just a show off.  Someone had caught a big fish or other game, so it was painted on a rock, almost live size.  These were often painted over and over again.  In some cases it was a formation of hands.  They meant, “I was here”.  So they were never painted over by others and respected.  Then, you had the ceremonial or secret paintings of spirits, both good and bad.  Some can’t be shown or shared. 

I took a fair few photos to share, so I’ll put some text on them to try to explain the content.  After the ranger talk we walked around and then headed back to camp as the sun had set and it had become dark.  As we came back to camp, another ranger was there to collect the camp fees and he then told us to watch out for the mossies!  We quickly went to our campsite and I scrounged around for some firewood to put in the campfire.  Once we got some fire going with lots of smoke the horde of mossies relented a bit!!

Kylie running amok at the wetlands center in the displays..

I stuck her into this Crock to calm her down!

Kylie viewing the surrounding area.

A pari of Yellow Oriole birds, female and male..  The male is the yellow one with the red eye patch.

The Croc safety warning.

A Jacana bird at the Mamukala wetlands.

Mamukala wetlands.

A purple swamp hen.

Magpie Goose.

Pacific Black Duck.

An Aboriginal boat at Bowali Centre in Jabiru.

The display center at Bowali.  Where is the other half of the Landcruiser??

Overview of some of the rock art at Ubirr.

They painted their game of various types, here mostly fish.

This is a spirit.  Painted on the underside of the overhang.  They say they painted themselves.

Here we see an early depiction of a European settler.  They all seemed to have their hands in their pockets and perhaps a pipe!

Here is a Tassie tiger.  They went extinct in mainland Australia thousands of years ago.

The ranger giving a talk!  See the sandstone rocks and wetlands to the left.

These sandstone formations are an ideal canvas.

They also did stick art in Kakadu..