Day 27: Kakadu

MBW and I love watching “The Amazing Race”. And we are the biggest critics of the people who go into the game unprepared.

And I mean totally unprepared.

Everybody who has ever watched TAR knows that there are a few things that you will need to do during the show, including:

• Drive a manual car
• Walk up many flights of stairs
• Run like your life depended on it
• Jump off or abseil down the tallest building in whatever place you happen to be
• Eat your own body-weight in meat (or worse, some disgusting “local delicacy” that is sure to have you vomiting, or wishing you were dead)

And yet people still get onto the show with no idea how to drive a manual car, and then they seem surprised when they have to do so.

Or they proudly announce that they are vegetarian, and complain when they are presented with the meat eating challenge.

Or they have to do a big run with their backpacks on, and they collapse in a heap from exhaustion.

So today, we became those people. The people who are woefully unprepared for the effort, and the heat, and the climb.

Today we had a Yellow Water Sunset Cruise planned for this evening (at sunset, as it happens), and we had been recommended by the local Visitor Information Centre that we should make a morning of visiting some local rock art, lookouts and a billabong.

Specifically, we were told that we should do that in the morning “when it is cool”.

Honestly, the locals must have all suffered from heat stroke and had their brains fried if they think this is cool weather.

So we had the usual start to the day, eating breakfast outside in the shade of the awning while we watched a few of our neighbours moving out and heading off on their adventures.

Water bottles filled, esky loaded, snacks packed, and we set off the 30km or so to Nawurlandja Lookout, Anbangbang Billabong, and Nourlangie Rock Art.

Try saying that when you are breaking in a new set of false teeth!

And we were advised to do them in that order.

So we turned up at the Nawurlandja Lookout carpark chocked full of hope and naive optimisation, noting that the temperature was already north of 30 degrees. We had a short, but animated discussion with another couple who were roughly our age about their knowledge of CPR, and we gave specific instructions for them to send out a search party if we weren’t back in an hour or so.

And they thought that I was kidding.

The path – such as it was – to get to the lookout was classified as “easy to moderate”, and I expect that is probably a suitable classification … if you were a mountain goat.

There was mostly no defined path, just orange arrows that broadly pointed you in a certain direction.

The path, while … challenging … was certainly worth the effort as the rock face kept changing, and the view from the top was absolutely amazing.

Like most places that we have been – National Parks, lookouts, waterholes – we could take a million photos, and not one of them will do justice for displaying the greatness, grandeur and beauty of this part of the world.

But we tried, so that we would have some images to share with you.

Note the warnings below. If the crocodiles don’t get you, the buffalo will.

You can see that the track to the top wasn’t particularly steep – maybe 10 degrees incline? – but you needed to watch where you put your feet because it was very uneven. You don’t want to roll an ankle up there while you are hopping from rock to rock, because you really will need to be carried out.

The trip to the top of the lookout and back down again was probably 45 minutes (and about 4 litres of sweat). We got back into Elsie to go and see Anbangbang Billabong which was only a couple of kilometres away.

There is a walking track between the Nawurlandja Lookout carpark and the Anbangbang Billabong, except that it was closed.

There seems to be a lot of things closed in the NP, and from what I can gather they had a late wet season and they need to allow everything time to dry out, and for (some) roads to be repaired. It seems that many of the roads suffer extensive damage during the wet season, so they all need repair before tourists come in the dry season.

Oh, and they need to make sure that the area is free from crocodiles.

In any case, why walk the couple of kilometres when we can move Elsie closer, and benefit from a few minutes of aircon.

And sitting down.

The billabong is a really calm and peaceful place. Much of it will dry out over the dry season as they have no rain here for several months.

But when it does rain, it rains. We have been told that last year it rained 1600mm over their wet season of a few months, with the typical rainfall being 1400mm.

Seriously, that is a lot of rain.

The billabong comes with its own risks (which happen to be the same risks everywhere else where there is water) – crocodiles.

Very peaceful and relaxing.

We stopped for a drink and bite to eat, and then headed off to the Nourlangie Rock Art site, just another few kilometres down the road.

Many of these rock art sites require a fair bit of walking because the carpark is never close to the rock formations and caves where the rock art is located.

And without wanting to point out the obvious, rock art requires rock formations to paint on, and because this is part of their history and storytelling, the rock art tends to be up quite high and in generally inaccessible locations.

Well, inaccessible for the original painters, but made a little easier by the inclusion of steps and walkways to get access, and barriers to keep you away.

Many of the paintings are said to be sacred drawings, and some of them (apparently) contain a warning that – if photographed – will bring bad luck. Like the bad luck I had yesterday dropping a carton of eggs out of the fridge … although I suspect that the bad luck that they are referring to is probably worse than that.

So there are some paintings that we couldn’t photograph as we respected their wishes.

Although I also have to wonder if another reason is because they want to keep the rock paintings as “family friendly” as possible. MA rated, if you will.

Because – I have to say – some of the male artists clearly had a very high opinion of themselves. If you know what I mean …

A VERY high opinion of themselves.

You won’t see any of that here!

The other thing that may not be immediately obvious is that rock/cave paintings are done on significant rock formations, and there is typically – in addition to the rock paintings – a lookout and view of the surrounding area.

So you don’t just look at rock paintings. You also do a great deal of walking, and a great deal of climbing.

Remember The Amazing Race? We were woefully unprepared 🙁

By this time it was pre-lunch, and so (as advised by the Visitor Centre ) we headed back to Percy for a rest and lunch. And to rehydrate.

We had booked the Yellow Water Sunset Cruise a couple of days ago. Everyone you ask says that it is a “must do” in Kakadu.

Hey, that rhymes 🙂

We needed to be at the boat ramp 20 minutes before the 4.30pm departure, so we were advised to visit the Warradjan Aboriginal Cultural Centre beforehand, which was just around the corner.

The boat ramp and the cultural centre are at Cooinda, which is a 40 minute, 57km drive from Anbinik where we are staying.

I have to say, if you are in Kakadu you should expect to do a lot of kilometres in the car. It’s easy to do 300 kilometres or more in a day just going from one waterhole or lookout to another.

It was a very pretty drive down the Kakadu Hwy to Cooinda. We passed the turnoff to the lookout, billabong and rock art from this morning’s outing, and kept going another 30km or so.

Unfortunately because of local traditions or customs, photography was not allowed inside the WACC, so no photos to share – sorry.

There is a custom in Aboriginal culture that says if someone dies, you cannot display their photo or say their name for a period of time. Sometimes months, often years. A number of the photos in the WACC were covered up for this reason – not that we could take photos of them anyway.

We got down to the bus terminal around 4.10pm to be picked up and taken down to the river for the sunset cruise. At $130/person and probably 50 people on each of 3 boats (that’s 150 people if you are having trouble with the maths), they are making a killing out of the boat trips.

And I think that there are a total of 4 – maybe 5 – cruises per day and they all seem to be pretty full.

Ka-ching!

Our tour guide (aka boat driver) was a slight man of about mid-60’s with coke bottle glasses, grey hair, and a pony tail. Glen

He certainly seemed very knowledgeable and had an eye for crocs lazing in the water, and an eye (and a name) for each of the birds that we saw.

Although – to be honest – I have a feeling that he made some of them up. He pointed out a plumed whistling duck (actually a flock of them) and explained that they were different to another type of whistling duck.

To be fair, a quick Google search does confirm that there actually is a plumed whistling duck, but whether that’s what we were actually looking at is unknown.

He also explained that the Aboriginal alphabet only has 22 letters (I don’t know which ones that they do without), but that an “a” is correctly sounded as in “father”, and a “u” is correctly sounded as in “put”.

So when you say Kakadu like that and sound the “a” and “u” correctly, it really does sound like an aboriginal speaking.

The other interesting fact that we got from Glen (the tour guide) is that when the aboriginals believe that there is a lot of something, they say it twice. Jim Jim Falls is an example – there are a number of waterfalls so it is named Jim Jim.

A bit like Tim-Tim from Daly Waters pub. There was a lot of him too, so it turns out that Tim-Tim is entirely appropriate.

Once again, I took several hundred photos of the Yellow Water system, but I will only share a few with you. But it was absolutely stunning.

Do yourself a favour – if you are in Kakadu in the dry season, take the Yellow Water Sunset Cruise because you won’t be disappointed.

We got back to Percy at Anbinik around 7.20pm or so and decided that we would have a meal at the restaurant here.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, as it probably turned out) they had closed the kitchen by the time we arrived, so we just went foraging in the freezer for something for a quick dinner.

I say “fortunately” because I looked up the menu prices online. Kakadu Resort is run in a similar way to the Uluru Resort that we visited before Christmas and they have a monopoly on the restaurants and other facilities here.

Remember the “supply versus demand” discussion from the other day? It is definitely a sellers market here and the prices on the menu reflect that.

$57 for a steak is probably a bit rich for my blood.

One of the best things that we brought with us was a USB bug zapper. We leave it on all night and we drift off to sleep to the sound of little bugs and other flying critters being zapped to death.

Better than them annoying us all night.

State of Origin tomorrow night (QUEENSLANDER!), so it will be an early dinner and then the game. 8.00pm kick-off as I recall, which is 7.30 here in the Top End, so it will be an earlier night than usual.

I’m going to need a haircut soon. I normally get it trimmed every 4 weeks or so, and I think it has now been about 6 weeks … so I’m starting to look like a woolly mammoth. I’m not really sure where I am going to find a barber or hairdresser (that I can trust) between Kakadu and Cairns, so … hmmm.

I might just grow it into a ponytail like Glen from the Yellow Water Sunset Cruise. He seemed to wear it OK.

PS: Confession time: put your hand up if you’ve been practising saying Kakadu like an Aboriginal for the last few minutes?

Yep, me too 😞

Ciao

#Retirement2024

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