Saturday morning, 14th April, and it’s around thirty-two degrees centigrade outside, the humidity is just less than 90%, and partly obscuring the clear blue skies, lots of big dark grey cumulus clouds are stacking up in the distance preparing for another short sharp late-afternoon thunder-shower. It has been like that for the last three days, ideal weather to visit this tropical tip of the Northern Territory as nature starts to recover from the wet season and prepare itself for the annual dry-season onslaught of 200,000 camera-toting tourists.
We came to Australia’s ‘Top End’ to see the famous – infamous?? – “salties’, the salt water crocodiles that inhabit the waters all around, fresh, brackish and saline. As the largest crocodile in the world, and being extremely carniverous, they have rightly claimed a place in the tourist bucket list of dangerous animals to be seen but not touched; a ‘glamping’ tour of Kakadu National Park promised to give us the chance to see them up close and in the wild.
Darwin Airport is rather unusual in allowing flights to land at all hours of the night and so our 01.00 arrival at the Palm City Resort in downtown Darwin was quite normal to everyone except ourselves! As we have done for much of this Aussie saga, we used AirBnB to find our accommodation for a couple of nights before heading off into the wilderness of Kakadu and we were somewhat surprised to learn that hotel rooms are now considered “couch-surfing” territory. Still, in spite of the lack of ‘homeliness’ we get from sharing someone’s home, it was comfortable enough and very convenient for exploring Darwin’s Central Business District – “CBD” in the local vernacular – which is how we set about acclimatising ourselves the following day. Darwin is a modern city lacking the charm of some of the other state capitals we have visited over the last couple of months; there is good reason for this, namely the terrble destruction wrought by Cyclone Tracy in 1974, which flattened virtually the complete city. As we wandered past Parliament Building we encountered a couple of motorcycle cops barring the road with their flashing blue lights who told us that, as the royals tend to do so often, Prince Charles was about to plant a tree.
Unsure whether or not this ceremony was open to the public, we stood by the iron railings of Government House, along with precisely two other members of the great proletariat, carefully watched by a security type who seemed somewhat surprised by our presence. As one of the assorted staff told the waiting media, “He just won’t stop chatting”, but Australia’s future king eventually came out after his luncheon as the guest of Vicky O’Halloran, the Administrator of Northern Territory. He chatted with some of the waiting minions, fellow guests apparently, shovelled two or three spades full of clean soil around the already planted tree, swapped horticultural niceties with the gardener who was the keeper of the royal spade, and drove off into the afternoon sunshine having completed his regal duties in Darwin.
We arrived in Australia having only limited knowledge about the indigenous population, the aborigines and the Torres Islanders. Visits to one or two museums – the National Gallery in Canberra in particular – had enlightened us somewhat, in spite of the predominance of displayed material about the lives of the early European settlers. But with a few exceptions, we hadn’t seen many aborigines in the cities, towns and villages we had visited. Our flight from Brisbane gave us our first close encounter when in the departure lounge we met a lovely group of Jawoyn ladies from Katherine, a town some 300km south of Darwin, on their way back from an International Women’s Federation conference that we think was part of the Commonwealth Games activities. Their laughter was totally infectious and they enjoyed having their photograph taken with Celine as much as we appreciated being part of their happiness. The streets of Darwin sadly presented a very different view of life for these people who have been so poorly treated ever since the white man arrived.
We have plenty of hopeless, homeless people in California but they don’t stick out in quite the same way as the many beautiful black faces we saw squatting alone or in groups, or wandering along the sidewalks, some slightly the worse for wear. The inequality of this still quite racial society became quite apparent, confirming what we had suspected but rarely witnessed earlier in our travels. We stopped in a small gallery that sold only aboriginal art, much of it being produced on site by a group of artists working cross legged on the floor; and there we bought another memento to remind us of our trip in future years, a stylised wooden carving of a Jabiru, the black-necked stork that is found in the local swamplands.
Booking tours in such a popular tourist destination is often a bit hit and miss, but we seem to have been reasonably lucky in our choice of WayOutBack Tours. Trish, our Irish-Aussie guide for the “3-Day Dragonfly Dreaming” tour of the parks, arrived fairly promptly around the appointed hour of 06.30am on Wednesday morning, and we were soon comfortably ensconced into our seats aboard “Ziggy”, the seventeen seater, 4WD, Isuzu truck-based bus that was to be our transport for the next three days. Kakadu NP is a vast area covering some 20,000 square kilometres – about the size of Wales – and although ‘relatively’ close to Darwin, our first day’s destination was a good three-hours-plus drive away; nothing is ever very close by in this vast continent of a country. Our first stop was a short visit to Window on the Wetlands, an educational building on a small hill overlooking green pastures of the Adelaide River valley. This was followed by a picnic lunch at Jabiru.
Later on, a couple of side excursions to see some examples of aboriginal rock art at Anbangbang gave us a chance to stretch our legs on short walks up among the rock formations along the edge of the Arnhem Land Escarpment.
The second of these, a steep clamber partway up the side of Nawurlandja (aka Nourlangie Rock), presented us with expansive views over the surrounding countryside and towards Arnhem Land in the distance, an area that remains forbidden territory to permit-less tourists such as ourslelves.
Our destination that evening was the Cooinda Lodge Gagadju, a campsite and motel owned by the Murrumburr people who are the traditional owners of the surrounding land, though now operated by the Accor Hotel Group. When booking the tour, the idea of sleeping under canvas for a couple of nights seemed rather appealing but when we arrived, tired, hot and sweaty, aware of the unkempt grassy walk between “fixed tents” – the “glam” part of glamping – and the ablution and toilet facilities, and the threatening dark black clouds and the swarms of insects flying around, we were quite glad we had taken the advice of a couple of our fellow travellers and requested a late upgrade to a cabin, which turned out to be as good as many a multi-starred hotel room we’ve stayed in over the years! We still enjoyed a communal dinner with our fellow travellers in the group kitchen tent and afterwards experienced the challenge of finding our torchless way back to our cabin in the total blackness of the outback nights before the heavens opened up once again.
Thursday started with a leisurely breakfast of cereals, toast and coffee, preparing ourselves for what would prove to be the highlight of the tour, two hours aboard a boat gliding along the waters of the North Alligator River, mistakenly named by the original white settlers who didn’t know the difference between ‘gators and crocs. Mandy, our Murrumburr guide, happy boat driver, and a wealth of local knowledge, was a delightful lady, full of tales from her life in this land of Ngurrudjurrudjba, which translates as Yellow Water. Her well-worn PA system was a bit unreliable and so we missed a lot of what she had to say and point out to us; nevertheless, we did see four of the “salties” we had been hoping for, three floating motionless and the fourth, quite a “big boy”, lying on the mud among the tree roots at the water’s edge.
Identifiable birdlife was pretty good as well: a couple of beautiful Black-necked storks or Jabiru in the local lingo, one or two Magpie Geese, two flocks of Plumed Whistling Ducks puddling in the riverside mud, Pacific Black Ducks, Snake-neck Darters, Magpie Geese, Cattle Egrets standing motionless among the tall riverside grass, a gang of Corellas squawking in the treetops and a very delicate Comb-crested Jacana guarding its two eggs laid among the lily-pads. 
The experience of floating along in such pristine wilderness, surrounded by nature on all sides, was sublime, and the time went by far quicker than we would have wished. All too soon, we were back aboard the bus being driven along the still flooded road to the lodge where Ziggy waited with Trish at the wheel to take us on another two hour drive to our next overnight stop near the entrance to Litchfield National Park.
While seeing the wild life and especially the salties is perhaps the major draw of this part of Australia, the tropical scenery has to come a close second. However, travelling with a group in a bus means one is very much at the mercy of the tour guide and we rather missed being our own masters, stopping as and when the whim takes us as had been the case when we were driving ourselves earlier in our trip.
All the same, we did stop at some very beautiful places of which our next destination was a perfect example, an unidentified, deep pool beneath a small waterfall surrounded by fern-covered rocks and tropical forest. “Swimmers” had been the dress order of the day, and once the bus had parked, a short walk through the forest found us ready to divest ourselves of our walking gear and take the plunge.
Other tour groups had got there before us and the place was already quite busy when we arrived, but after staking our claim for a rocky corner on which to deposit our belongings, most of us slid off the edge of the rocks into the deliciously cool water, and even those less keen swimmers took full advantage of its blissful refreshing properties.
The destination for our second night of “glamping” was what had once been an enormous cattle station. Mount Bundy Station was established in 1911 and in those days covered an area of 2160 sq.km. The tourist part of the station, close to the banks of the Adelaide River, is now more of a hobby farm; the area around the original station buildings offers both camping facilities, including the permanent tents that are jokingly considered to provide glamorous camping, as well as rooms in what were once the stockmen’s sleeping quarters. We again opted for one of the latter which was certainly a step up from a hot, mosquito-infested, fixed tent, but hardly The Ritz!
The main social meeting place is small bar complete with a miniature horse that hangs around among the customers and a swarm of cane toads that hide under the ancient beer cooler. Several regulars, including a few who came to visit years ago and have found it hard to leave and help with the chores to pay their rent, give the place a friendly atmosphere that make it one of those places one would be happy to return to if one ever happened to travel that way again. We took a couple of peaceful walks around the grounds, made friends with Nigel, the Brahmin bull, failed to see the pet pig, and tried in vain to photograph the many rather skittish wallabies that disappeared into the bushes near the river as soon as they were looked at.
Friday the 13th April was our last day of the tour and the main attractions of the day were the pools and waterfalls for which Litchfield NP is best known. We had an early start, just in time to see the sun rise and then disappear behind threatening grey clouds; peacocks and a jabiru were wandering the grounds, the wallabies were hopping everywhere and four highly-spirited horses were running around the adjacent field, enjoying the early morning dampness of the grass. Driving back along the Stuart Highway we judiciously gave road space to several of the ubiquitous 50+m long road-trains, most of which were hauling cattle. Flooding is another regular part of life in Australia’s Top End; our road passed through the town of Adelaide River where the river had risen 11m in January, the highest for years, causing the town to be evacuated for three days.
Just outside the town of Batchelor, best known for the Batchelor Institute, a technical and further education college with a strong focus on providing higher education opportunities for indigenous students from all over Australia, we stopped for a pee-break at the Banyan Tree Cafe.
Pytheta, the owner of the cafe, has a pet Children’s Python – a non-venomous snake named after the zoologist, John G Children – which a few of us were lucky enough to hold and discover how powerful these snakes are as they hang on to your arm, or neck!
And soon it was time for our first swim of the day at Buley Rockhole, a small pool just deep enough to jump into safely with a miniature waterfall at one end and a natural infinity pool effect at the other end where the stream cascades over the rocky ledge. We luxuriated in the warm water for much longer than Trish had anticipated, until eventually we reluctantly departed not realising that our next stop, at Florence Creek Falls, would be just as wonderful.
The day was marching on and so while Trish prepared lunch, we all trod the 150+ steps down to the pool, stopping only at the lookout for a birds-eye view on the way down. This pool was very different from Buley Rockhole.
The water was extremely deep, the twin 20m high falls were in full spate and the resulting current across the large pool was so strong that swimming straight to the falls was well nigh impossible for all except the strongest swimmers. It was also quite crowded so we didn’t overstay our welcome and while some lingered, Celine and I took the scenic route back up to the car park along Shady Creek Walk, to find lunch awaiting us laid out on the rather grubby picnic table. Lunch this day was the leftovers from the trip so not much of a surprise, but welcome all the same after our healthy morning activities.
The afternoon involved another fairly long drive so a lot more sitting in the bus, but we did make a couple more stops to prevent terminal stiff-leg syndrome setting in. The first was to look at another fine waterfall, Tolmer Falls at the edge of Table Top Plateau, which we viewed from a very smart wheel-chair accessible platform. These falls drop some 40m into a plunge pool which is no longer accessible for swimming; it seems that this prohibition resulted from some thoughtless people who had been throwing stones at a rare colony of bats living in a cave near the base of the falls.
The second stop was at the “pièce de résistance” of Litchfield Park, Wangi Falls, a segmented waterfall dropping 54m into a large pool, that was also closed to bathers when we visited as it had not yet been declared clear of crocodiles; the rangers need to have at least six weeks of croc-free waters at the end of the wet season before they will run the risk of allowing people to swim in any of the pools, except for those that are high enough to be out of saltie territory!
Just one more stop to look at the Magnetic Termite Hills, an impressive demonstration of nature’s ingenuity in building structures that have minimal exposure to the midday sun, and then we were on our way back to Darwin. As we arrived at our respective hotels, we each made our brief farewells to our travelling companions and returned to urbanity once more. Celine and I gave ourselves a much deserved gourmet dinner at “Moorish Cafe”, which offered an eclectic mix of Spanish Tapas and North African cuisine, before retiring to our room, catching up on our electronic mail, watching part of a movie, and then falling gratefully into bed.
The next morning, on the way to the airport, we had time to make a brief but very educational stop at The Museum and Art Gallery of Northern Territory, with its well presented collection of modern aboriginal art; most of the artworks were an expression of frustration with the convoluted workings of the Australian Human Rights Commission and the legislation that it generated. We also learned more about the effects of Cyclone Tracy, and got close to lots of stuffed birds and animals, most of which we never got to see, or at least recognise, in the wild.
All-in-all we had had a fascinating three day adventure; it was not exactly what we had expected in some ways but was well worth making the detour. We didn’t manage to see crocodiles jumping out of the water, but that was perhaps because our boat tour was aimed more at giving us an understanding of aboriginal life in the swampy wetlands of the Kakadu, rather than doing the touristy thing. We felt slightly short changed by the small selection of wild animals we saw. And like others who had written reviews in the past, we were disappointed by the large amount of time that was spent sitting in the bus. But then again, as we had already discovered for ourselves Australia is a big place and always involves a lot of travelling; and wild animals are very often elusive at the best of times!
Coming soon:
Oz 2018 – Part 6 – No worries, mate, see you ‘gain sometime!
