KAKADU NATIONAL PARK

Well it's stinking hot up here kiddos, heat stroke can hit you by 11am if you haven't had your 3 Litres of H2O by then and although Tisha has been trying to convince me otherwise, cordial doesn't count!
We left Darwin and drove south to Pine Creek, and decided to enter Kadadu from the Southern Gate. For a number of reasons we chose not to do the Northern route, lack of 'safe' swim spots was definitely one of them. How do you convince anyone (including a four year old, sorry thirty-five year old) to do a bush walk, if there is no swimming reward as enticement?

We purchased our National Park passes at Mary River Roadhouse ($25p adult), then traveled another 100km to our first stop over - GUNLOM Campground. Whilst the corrugated road in was a tad more bumpy than anticipated, two broken van feet later we made it..ah ah aha aha ah.....every bone in our bodies jiggled sufficiently, to our destination.

Here we stayed 3 nights, enjoying the water play in the massive plunge pool at the base of Gunlom Falls. From here Kerry and I did a day trip to Yurmikmik Walks. Wanting to "beat the heat" and attempt the 11km hike to Motor Car Falls and Kurrundie Falls we headed off early.

Based on the "information" we had we spent the first hour and a half scrambling our way straight up the escarpment, all the while feeling certain it would be easy once we reached the peak. Let me just say, the view from up here was phenomenal! Did we take a picture? No, because we were both exhausted, gasping for breath and quietly panicking realizing that we were "lost" and the only way out was back down!

Mountain Goat I am not, but I reckon I overcloaked one to make it safely down to the bottom. All I could hear in the back of my mind was mum grievingly pleading with me to stay back from the edge! Well, the EDGE was the only escape route available!

We breathed a sigh of relief and claimed "that was an unexpected adventure! Shall we find the correct path now??" So having collected ourselves, downed another litre of water, we took a hunch and decided to follow the signs to a different walk which might lead us eventually to our desired track. And sure enough it did about 10mins down the way we reached the turn off for the Yurmikmik Lookout (which was pretty lame compared to where we'd just come from) and Motor Car Falls, 3.8km dead ahead.

A swim was DEFINITELY in order by the time we reached the plunge pool. Why it's called Motor Car Creek Falls we have no idea. It's one of the few falls that are still trickling at this stage of the dry.
Bombs away!!! We both dropped our packs and went sailing over the edge like its the last pool we would ever swim in - yeeha! The only down side was having to walk 4km back to the car at 3 in the arvo. Even the ants look for a cool shady spot at that time of the day, which was IN OUR VAN we discovered on our return!!

GUNLOM was a brilliant place to camp, it's a shame about the rough road to get in there otherwise we would probably call in there on our way back down south. It came with foot massages and shoulder massages aka hot hands 7yr old Riley. Mind you, I think the timer clock may have been extended when it was swap over!

Approx 500m from the spacious campground was the large deep plunge pool - big enough for us, the freshies, and yellow-spotted monitors. Although I will admit, swimming the 100m across the deep dark pool to the rock face and waterfall, I did wonder just how good a job the rangers did trapping and removing any Salties that made their way here during the wet.

That thought became more of a sharp intake of breath and heart palpitation when I saw something splash 20m ahead of me. I looked back at the bank where all the others were...not really wanting to be croc bait, I realized I was the closest target. See that's the trouble with wearing clear goggles or snorkel - you can see what's coming! I think maybe, I'd rather not know what lerks beneath and just exit the earth plane quickly without the life time of panic that flashes in the seconds between breathing and death! The mind really can conjure false expectations appearing real! It was rather amusing though that after I had swam to the waterfall, and was resting on a rock ledge on the opposite side of the plunge pool, about 15 other people decided it was obviously 'safe', and also swam over!! Great, so I really was the tokenistic "croc bait"!

The next few days the temperature ramped up even further, so we stayed close to camp and enjoyed the gut buster 1km hike straight up to the lookout and awesome pools above the Gunlom waterfall.
Here we were thinking our fitness level was pretty good, hiking 4-5hrs most days. The first 100m up this lookout track had us blowing like a race horse!! It obviously wasn't intense enough to prevent us from trudging up there again the morning we departed for a swim in solitude though.

JABIRU - is more developed than we expected. A small township with a supermarket, a very well kept 50m swimming pool (which we frequented for laps), bakery, police station, bank, and golf club. Since swimming in natural settings tempts certain death, and the high 30 degree days meant dodgey walking conditions, the lap pool was our savior.

We took a day trip 40 odd km north to Ubir (oo-bir) to the famous art sites and to watch the Crocs opportunistic feed time at Cahills Crossing during high tide. Actually, we just wanted to see a real salty in its real environment. Many others were there to witness the crocs cleverly catching the mullet as they jump the crossing during high tide. They are currently in fattening up mode, preparing for mating season.

Today we ventured up to Arnhem and the community of Gunbalanya for the Stone Country Festival. Here we had the unfortunate pleasure of smelling bush tucker, whilst many others partook in the tasting of wallaby, goose, duck, wild pig, and fish. We did however enjoy watching the basket weaving from Pandanus palms and learnt a little about the source of dyes used in weaving.
We were a bit concerned about re-crossing the river at high tide, but it all turned out A-OK, even eye-balling a massive croc as we crawled past!

The temperature up here is nearing 40, we had to break out the 12v fan last night (best 20 bucks ever spent!), and the lack of swimming is an unaccustomed issue. So tomorrow we head back toward the Southern Gate, possibly via Jim Jim, Yellow Water and Nourlangie.