Kakadu - Yurmikmik

Decided to the Yurmikmik walks, a 7.4 km walk. The walk involves walking out to Motor Car Falls. The only falls open at the moment. It was a hot day, therefore a bit of whinging by the kids, but it was worth it. The falls were great and we had the place to ourselves. At the end of the walk we had another swim at Boulder Creek, another beautiful spot.

Kakadu Ant hills

Travelling along the Kakadu Highway and came across this giant ant hill.

Kakadu - Yellow Waters

An early start today.  We got up at 5 am so we could do the Yellow Waters sunrise cruise. We saw many crocs to Mitch's delight. The family fave is the comb-crested Jacnana, who can walk on the lillies.  The males are very tricky.  They hide the chicks in their plume. You can see all these legs hanging out the front.  Then all of a sudden the chicks are released and they start walking around him. If you look hard in the photo you can count 4 chicks.

Kakadu - Nourlangie /Ubirr

Today we visited Nourlangie and the Anabangbang gallery. Here we could see Aboriginal Rock Paintings dating back thousands of years. One was painted as early as 1969. we joined the ranger talk and listened to the creation and ancestral stories of the area.

In the afternoon we visited Ubirr and and Nodob Lookout. Here we saw more Aboriginal Rock Art and and viewed a painting of a Thylocine. The lookout provided 360 views of Kakadu, including views over the wetlands and Arnhem land.

Kakadu

So far Kakadu has not turned out out like we thought. To begin with Chris informed the family we had a 250km drive today. However, much to Mitch's disatifaction the drive was more like 500km to where we were stopping. He could not understand that Kakadu was a national park and not a town, and could not understand why we had not stopped once we drove through the entrance to Kakadu. Our trobles did not stop here. We had to drive to the end of the Kakadu Highway (200km away) to go to the visitors infornation centre to purchase our Parks pass and find where we could camp. Chris had been talking up bush camping in Kakadu, however, much to our misfortune this was not possible. It turns out when you come to Kakadu early in the dry season you cannot do much.  This includes Jim Jim, Twin falls, Gunlam and Magkuk all being closed due to the late wet season, they are still trying to remove the crocs. There are only two campgrounds open for tents only. Therfore we cannot bush camp as we wish to use the generator due to the heat. So we have had camp at Kakadu Lodge Caravan Park. The boys are happy with this as there is a pool and with the heat needed to cool off.