26 June 2011 - Kakadu, N.T. Australia

Freshwater croc at Yellow Water



Suset at Yellow Water

 Time to move camp again to another part of the National Park further south.  On the way we stop at Jabiru 'township' to refuel only to find that the 'servo' was undergoing big renovations but they had a temporary site around the corner.  Stu was amazed with the setup, which was two very large rectangular containers filled with fuel (about the size of shipping containers) & they had to refill them both every 2 days - that's a lot of fuel!  Any building or maintenance work has to be done in the dry season which of course is the busiest tourist season,  so that makes things rather difficult.  It must be quite strange living out here in the wet season.  We asked the young girl serving us what they did, & she said it was pretty much eat, drink, sleep, & read, though the golf course usually had about 4 holes which were not submerged & still playable.  They are often totally cut off from Darwin & the south.  Last wet was an extended one, &  everything is a little behind in being put to rights, meaning that there are still quite a few of the unsealed roads closed.

We were to have a nasty little surprise at our next National Park camp site at Madugal.  We had discovered first thing that morning a few tiny ants in the van, & duly dispensed with them before we packed up to move.   However on opening out the awning again we were met by hundreds of them in the awning mechanisms.  Since then we have had more in the van so they must have come from the last site - surrounded by trees & long grasses on our lovely site. We have now noticed that lots of caravanners put talcum powder around their wheels when they set up - apparently the ants are not keen on it for some reason.
The camp here is on the South Alligator River & you may wonder why the rivers are named alligator & not crocodile.  The story goes that in the early days some American came out here & thinking the crocs were the same as the alligators back home, mistakenly  named the rivers .  The first thing we did was walk down to the boat ramp & honestly I don't know how some of these people launch boats without getting in the water.  Plus they go out in little tin dinghies which a big croc could so easily turn over.  We even saw a couple of guys from the camp go out in one of those rubber ones!  One good bite & it would be 'gurgle, gurgle'.   Our exercise for the afternoon was to a lookout up a steep rocky track in the heat.  The view was hardly worth it, but the lookout tower was large & very high with lots of seats & got a beautiful cooling breeze, so it was nice to just sit for awhile before we made our way down again.  That evening there was a Park Ranger slide show about aboriginal rock carvings & although we had seen a large number the day before, it was still interesting & informative.


At the top of Gunlom Falls




Motor Car Falls pool



Programme for the next day was to explore the immediate area by car,  headed off to Jim Jim Billabong along a very corrugated off road track (me driving), which we didn't manage to reach due to water across the road which had no depth marker on & looked very deceptive.  We learned from our next door neighbour campers that they did the same drive & watched two vehicles go through & the water was over their number plates.  Stu felt totally vindicated for not wanting to do it.  Our afternoon event was to have been a boat cruise down the Yellow River which has the reputation of being one of the best places for birds, crocs & sunsets.  The i-site had told us the boats were full for that evening, so we booked (but did not pay) for the following one, which was a bit of a pain as we really wanted to move on next morning.  As it happened the people in the next caravan did manage to get on it that night & weren't all that taken with it.  The crux of it all was that we cancelled ours, went down to the Yellow River ourselves, took photos of the hundreds of the very vocal magpie geese, white egrets, herons, water lilies etc plus a most beautiful red dragon fly.  After a couple of hours of relaxation in the hottest part of the day (now 32) we returned to the river again to take wonderful sunset photos which would have been every bit as good as on the cruise if not better, & a heck of a lot cheaper.  And to cap it all off we even watched a croc cruise down past all the visitors on the boardwalk, not real close, but we managed to get a reasonable photo using the zoom.  We had previously been feeling a bit disappointed with some of Kakadu (lack of birds in particular) but do realise it is dependant on the time of year you visit.  So finally a really lovely, positive end to our visit here.

Milly (Loo sign) Mary River Roadhouse

Willie (Loo sign) Mary River Roadhouse