Cloud 9 Part 3 Litchfield & Kakadu National Parks ‘The Top End’

We were now on our last leg of our tour. We said goodbye to Sophie and Tom as they were doing this tour in a few days time, so with the lovely old German couple also departing and a few others we were now down to 11 for the last 3 days.

We had to get up at 5am and after a big night out, that wasn’t quite a good idea! Lets just say it was hilarious watching Karolina trying to get dressed!!! But still we did get up (woke most of the non tour room mates in the process) and met our final tour guide Karl. He was a typical outback Australia with the strong accent and the ‘Steve Irwin’ look about him, but we found out he’s actually from Melbourne, but he so looked the part for an outback tour guide!!!!

So our first stop for the day was Litchfield National Park (south west of Darwin) We stumbled across some gigantic ‘castle’ and magnetic termite mounds (10ft +) and Karl entertained us with some funny stories about them. They are pretty impressive and its estimated that the termites can only build about 10cm per year, so some of the termite mounds we were looking at were over 60 years old.....crazy stuff!

The rest of the morning was a breeze....no hiking today thank goodness, I don’t think any of us would of been able to!!! Instead we checked out a load of waterholes! Our first stop was Boley Waterhole, which looked more like a river, but there were some great little spots to swim in......we needed the dip to freshen us up! Poor Jen was sick in the bus so this did her the world of good!!! Boley had quite a strong current and at some point I felt a little unsafe....but the boys were having a ball rocking climbing/jumping and exploring little areas!

Our next stop was Florence Falls, we had to walk down to the falls and on the way down we spotted half a dozen little wallibies, they are so cute! This waterhole was beautiful and had a 25m high waterfall. The only negative was there were lots of people here doing the same as us so it kind of felt like a public swimming pool...completely different atmosphere to the waterhole at Katherine Gorge. Yet again it was lush to swim in the crystal clear water and freshen up. It was quite muggy today so the swims were perfect...especially for the few with sore heads!

This trip has two different itineraries depending on whether you come in the wet or dry season. We are here in the wet so that means a lot more waterholes and not so much wildlife. We also missed out on seeing the biggest falls at Kakadu National Park (Jim Jim and Twin Falls) as the roads are flooded this time of year. But still, Karl assured us we were still in for a real treat the next few days!

We headed to Banyon Tree Coffee shop for lunch and then drove 90minutes to the Adelaide River for our saltwater crocodile boat tour! The boat trip was great....we saw a couple of 2-3m crocs swimming with their eyes just above the water! Our guide for the trip Steven told us a lot of information on salt water crocs and we learnt that up until about 1971 it was legal to hunt down crocs, after this time is was banned as it was feared they would become extinct. This is way today you very rarely get to meet the big big crocs which are known to be as big as 8m in length. The older they are the bigger they are, so the 2-3m crocs are around 20yrs old.

We did get to meet a biggy though......we spotted him on the river bank, covered in sludge mud.....he was gigantic. Steve estimated about 6 half metres in length. His head was bigger than 1m. He was extremely scary and looked so calculating and dominant. We bumped into the river bank and he got startled and moved and moved into the water. I was quite nervous at this point...you don’t really want anything to happen to the boat at this point otherwise your dead meat! Mum....are you sure you want to get up close and personal with them?????

He swam around the boat and we were literally inches away from him. Steve also fed him meat on a big stick and we saw him jump up into the air and grab the meat. You can really see their strength when half their body comes up out of the water....ooo it gives me the shivers now!!! He was about 80 years old and could still live for another 30-40 years. You can definitely see a bit of dinosaur in them too.....scary stuff but we loved it!!!
That covered most of day one. We stopped at pub in Carrobree to get some beers for the trip and there was a big party going on......a bit like a wild wild west party! They had a bucking bronco and they persuaded a few of us girlies to have a go! It was raining a little bit now but it was all good fun! We got chatting to some locals and we think the lady was telling us there was 200 people that lived in this little town! She was from the ‘Territory’ born and bred and you don’t get too many natives anymore! It was all good fun!
We camped at Point Stewart, most probably our best campsite (bar the mosquitoes) and had an early night!!!!

Day 2 – January 26th ‘Australia Day’

Happy Australia Day!!!! Typical...we’re in the middle of nowhere!!! We didn’t really take this into consideration when booking the trip but what the hell...we tried to make a good day of it!

We drove a few hours to Kakadu National Park.....a place so many people have told us has been their favourite in the whole of Australia. Kakadu has been a home to aboriginal tribes for tens of thousands of years and our first stop of the day was at a place called Obirr. We walked along the area and Karl showed us some interesting areas and pointed out some things the black fella’s would use to live or things they would eat. We then arrived at some sandstone rocks and were showed some amazing aboriginal rock art, some aged at 20,000years plus. The aboriginals passed everything down the generations by art, music, song and dance and we saw some art which explained to children the reason not to steal. There were also lots of paintings of Barramundi fish and Kangaroos. There was also a painting of a firearm, obviously a more art depicting the white fella’s.
Kakadu is also famous for being the location where Crocodile Dundee was filmed. We saw a few landmarks which we recognised from the films . We climed the rocks and reached a peak with beautiful views over the flood plains (not yet flooded, but should be very soon. The area is so lush and green. Shame the weather was hot and humid, Daz and I were sweating buckets! Plus quite a few flies out today!!!!!

It seemed quite a few people were on a low today, we’d been on the road for 8 days, early mornings, long walks and the heat and humidity was helping today. Darren and I seemed to be the only ones feeling normal so we tried to motivate some of the others. Karl enlightened us by telling us we were going on a 5 mile hike in the afternoon to Gubara waterhole.

Two people from the tour stayed in the bus as they were not feeling well, so the rest of us set off to the waterhole! At least there was a cool, refreshing swim at the other end!!!!!! We headed out, the scenery full of large rock boulders almost like mountains when Karl said he was going to take us to a look out first! We didn’t think anything of this so we carried on. We were still at ground level and any view point would of had to be high on top of these big rocks a few hundred metres high. I saw a big boulder really high up in the distance and jokingly said ‘Karl that’s our view point yeah?’ (While pointing at the big rock which looked impossible to reach). Karl said ‘Yeah, thats where we’re heading’!!

All us girls just looked at eachother and thought you have got to be kidding me!!!! Karolina and Jen were not impressed, at one point it looked like Lina was going to scream!!!!!! The German girls chose not to continue but Daz, I, Jen, Lina, Thomas and Adam (Team USA) kept going and I’m pretty sure what we did was not only dangerous but against Kakadu rules! (ooops) We climbed up all sorts of rocks/boulders, through a narrow split in a rock like a cave and had to be pushed and pulled up some rocks as they were so huge! We reached the top and the last thing we had to do was try and get onto of this big boulder which I pointed out from the bottom. We made it and we all felt amazing and the adrenalin was running, everyone feeling great and literally on top of the world! The views were fantastic and we were so proud that we’d climbed what we thought was the impossible!

We had lots of pictures and Karl told us it was called ‘The Castle’ – we started shouting and having a bit of fun when Karl also told us to keep quiet as we were not supposed to be up here as it is an aboriginal sacred area. Great!!!!!! We didn’t climb Uluru out of respect but now where on top of a big rock, not knowing we weren’t meant to be here. Not our fault! But sooooo totally worth it! Another highlight of the trip!!

We climbed down carefully (don’t worry Daz was looking after me!) and our reward was another dip in another wicked waterhole! I bet your thinking this tour is easy as......a bit of walking and lots of swimming! Trust me it was tough, some of the walks were really long and steep, plus you try walking in 40degrees+ temperatures! Thats why we have been up so early....doing the walks before it gets hot! However this walk was in afternoon and it was really tough! The waterhole with another little fall was a perfect end to another great place. Kakadu is beautiful!

Once we got back to the van most of us were shattered! We camped in Cooinda and attempted to have fun for Australia night...had a few flag stickers and Jane (other tour guide) was at our camp site with another group and she brought round some chocolate! Most of us hit the sack about 9pm.....it had been a long day!

Day 3 – Last Day of Tour

I woke up today and felt absolutely drained! Another early start (6am) Uluru seemed like ages ago...its gone so fast!
We headed out early for our final trek, to Motorcar Falls! It was a straight walk but I felt really tired. It was 2miles there and 2 miles back and yet again there was an amazing waterhole and waterfall to swim in!!!! We passed some signs saying ‘WARNING – Crocodiles’ but don’t worry parents.....our tour guides were swimming in the holes too so if they didn’t think there was a risk....neither did we!!!! Most of the signs said crocs can be found in this area but have never been seen to frequent this area, so its mainly a warning sign just incase!!!!!

Our 4 wheel drive was bumping all over the place to our final destination of the trip. One final waterhole at Kurundie! I was too tired and just as we arrived it started to pour with rain! Our only real down pour of the entire trip, so we counted ourselves very lucky! Darren and a few others went for one last swim and a few others tried to prepare lunch but it was raining too much....lunch turned into a very wet affair!!

After lunch we said goodbye to Kakadu which is most definitely a cultural and natural beauty on the world heritage list and crossed the Mary River, the start of the 3hr trip back to Darwin. Kakadu was definitely a beautiful area to visit and we’re glad we saw it.
I slept most of the way back to Darwin and we checked back into the same Darwin hostel for one more night. To our delight they upgraded Darren and I to a double room which was so nice as we’ve been living in dorms 6-12 people since leaving Ainsley in Adelaide. I was so nice to have our own space and not worry about leaving stuff around the room! And we had a tv...perfect!

It also dawned on us our tour was over and our little family we’d gotten so close were all heading off in different directions as of tomorrow. It’s such a shame that you can become good friends with people while travelling, you all have the same thing in common but come from different corners of the world and may never see eachother again. Its such a bummer. But we’ll try and keep in touch and we’ve planned on catching up with Jen, Sophie and Tom in Brisbane in a few weeks time!

We had a full day in Darwin on the Wednesday. Didn’t really get up to much as it rained all day so we enjoyed the swimming pool and had a little walk around the town! We also went to the internet cafe and Darren got so irate with the pc as it wouldn’t upload photos we ended up crossing the road and buying a laptop! Oooops! (Been very worth it since!)
We checked out of the hostel and hung out with Karolina and Jen for the evening as they were flying to Brisbane at 1am. We were slumbing it again in the airport till 5am! Great fun!!!!

So our Cloud 9 tour came to an end. We had a absolute ball and we will always have some amazing memories with great people! The places we have seen have been fantatic and beautiful and we'd recommend it to anyone! And guess what..............I didn’t see any scary spiders!!!!!!
xxxxx