We entered our last leg of our Australian adventure when we arrived in Darwin, the gateway to the so-called Northern Territory and the last populated port before jumping to Indonesia.
The highlight of our last leg was yet again, wildlife and natural parks…..with the caveat that these are full of the largest crocodiles in the world, the most venomous snakes and the nastiest bugs, including spiders and others….I am happy to report that we are still in one piece…..Northern Territory is really far away even for regular Australians….a truly unspoiled, aboriginal place….
Darwin in itself has little to offer, it is just a place to go to the three main attractions of the area: Kakadu and Litchfield National Parks, Katherine Gorge and probably Arnhem Land, a mysterious aboriginal land for which one needs a special permit to get access to.
Logistics:
When we were planning and looking for lodging options, we realized that the so-called ‘eco-lodges’ where a bit…..little maintained and overpriced, to put it mildly…. However, we had heard numerous stories about the wonders of visiting New Zealand and Australia with a camper van, sleeping under the stars, by the riverside, roasting marshmallows with chocolate and enjoying Coronas around a bonfire with wood taken from the forest…..so Laura suggested that since we had never done it, it would be the right thing to do and as a bonus point, it would be an ‘adventurous experience’…..
Well, we were given a monster with two floors and I suscribe an insurance package that did not include ‘roll over’…in case you wonder, it is not rare to fall off the road and roll over…with the added bonus that you can do so close to beautiful creeks infested by crocs among other delightful creatures…..Unfortunately, on the way to Kakadu, we saw another smaller 4WD vehicle that had encountered such fate…..really reassuring….
The ‘experience’:
Well, it was a bit weird at the beginning to drive on the left, with wheel on the right, over narrow lines, facing road trains from time to time, and under the burning sun of the tropics, en route to Kakadu……My years driving in London served me well, I have to say, but the weight and length of the vehicle made the feat challenging…
Anyhow, I have to say that the ‘Beast’ was the boys’ delight – they LOVED their rolling house, the fact that they had a penthouse and were sleeping ‘upstairs’……and the rest….We felt it was an appetizer of what life with them may be in a boat causing the Whitsundays or the Mediterranean…..but on wheels…..unfortunately, we could not fully enjoy the nights out under the stars since we were still in the ‘Wet season’, entering into the ‘Dry’, and dawn and dusk are specially fertile in nasty mossies….and if you dare them….you may be taken as a chicken breast by one of the resident crocs….In the end, it was a beautiful experience that I am happy we did, but it would probably take some time till the next one 😉
We spent 5 days in the parks, enjoying Kakadu as well as Litchfield, as well as the Adelaide River area…It was an incredibly rich and valuable experience, although energy draining – it is not easy to navigate that territory with two little kids who love to explore, get off the beaten track and try to touch every single thing that moves around!!!!!
We learned big time from the aboriginal people, their culture, customs, heritage and governance. We enjoy amazing scenery, mysterious birds and billabongs full of scary crocs and beautiful vegetation….we learned about mother nature and the 6 seasons that aboriginal people experience in Kakadu….
we learned about their gods, and how they survive in the bush….we learned how they were conquered by the Brits and their still painful yet amicable relationship with modern days….we lived and dreamt….in case you wondered, we do not have any pic with an aboriginal since they are extremely sensitive to these, so if interested, make your way there!
At the end, we were really tired but happy for having done it and start with a high note our next chapter in Indonesia!!!!!!!
Kakadu National Park
The park is located within the Alligator Rivers Region of the Northern Territory. However, there are crocs! not alligators here! It covers an area of 19,804 km2 (7,646 sq mi), extending nearly 200 kilometres from north to south and over 100 kilometres from east to west. It is the size of Slovenia, about one-third the size of Tasmania, or nearly half the size of Switzerland. Distances in Australia are massive and one can fit the entirety of Europe inside! We also saw the Ranger Uranium Mine, one of the most productive uranium mines in the world, is surrounded by the park.
Kakadu National Park is a living cultural landscape with exceptional natural and cultural values. Kakadu has been home to Aboriginal people for more than 50,000 years, and many of the park’s extensive rock art sites date back thousands of years. Kakadu’s rock art provides a window into human civilisation in the days before the last ice age. Detailed paintings reveal insights into hunting and gathering practices, social structure and ritual ceremonies of Indigenous societies from the Pleistocene Epoch until the present.
The largest national park in Australia and one of the largest in the world’s tropics, Kakadu preserves the greatest variety of ecosystems on the Australian continent including extensive areas of savanna woodlands, open forest, floodplains, mangroves, tidal mudflats, coastal areas and monsoon forests. The park also has a huge diversity of flora and is one of the least impacted areas of the northern part of the Australian continent. Its spectacular scenery includes landscapes of arresting beauty, with escarpments up to 330 metres high extending in a jagged and unbroken line for hundreds of kilometres.
The hunting-and-gathering tradition demonstrated in the art and archaeological record is a living anthropological tradition that continues today, which is rare for hunting-and-gathering societies worldwide. Australian and global comparisons indicate that the large number and diversity of features of anthropological, art and archaeological sites (many of which include all three site types), and the quality of preservation, is exceptional.
Many of the art and archaeological sites of the park are thousands of years old, showing a continuous temporal span of the hunting and gathering tradition from the Pleistocene Era until the present.
On the way out from the caveman art galley, Valen ‘Attenborough’ found a kangaroo
We did an amazing trip at Yellow River at dawn in which we witnessed amazing, unpolluted wildlife like the one that enamor the aboriginal people of Australia…
Litchfield National Park
Together with stunning tropical waterfalls and swimming holes, this is a truly beautiful destination found just south of Darwin, the capital city of the Northern Territory. Litchfield National Park features numerous waterfalls which cascade from a sandstone plateau called the Tabletop Range, monsoon rainforests, intriguing magnetic termite mounds and historical sites.
Swimming in Litchfield also poses less of a threat from Crocodiles than other parks in the Northern Territory. The magnetic termite mounds are a popular tourist attraction. These wedge-shaped mounds are aligned in a north-south direction as a response to the environment. The termites which build them feed on grass roots and other plant debris found in plains which are seasonally flooded. Therefore, the termites are forced to remain above the water, in the mound. The alignment of the mound acts as a temperature regulator, and allows the temperature to remain stable.
Adelaide River
A circus….jumping crocs….one needs to see it to believe it….
