...Onwards through Kakadu National Park, we past wetland areas with such an abundance of beautiful birds, including one I nicknamed "Jesus Bird", coz it is so light it just walks on all the root systems of the lilypads near the surface, but to the eye it looks as though it's actually walking on water...very cool! The afternoon was spent at one of Kakadu's most famous sites for Aboriginal Rock Art, of various ages. It was stunning, and I felt privileged to be able to look at it, as alot of Aboriginal sites are off-limits to non-Aboriginals. The paintings depicted various stories that the elders would have taught the young children, to emphasise morals or values, or education e.g. the biological structure of a fish or kangaroo. Afterwards, we got to hike up to one of the best look-out points in the area...we could see smoke from the controlled forest fires, used to regenerate the bushland, and we looked out over the area where they filmed part of the "Crocodile Dundee" movie!! (yes, Dad!) Onwards, to watch the sunset at one of the wetland areas, which was one of the best sunsets I had seen (I always say that don't I?!)...but it was beautiful, coz on the horizon were dead tree shapes, which silhouetted perfectly (check out the pics pages). After collecting firewood and setting up camp, we settled ourselves around the camp-fire for a huge Aussie campfire dinner...kangaroo & buffalo!?! Really nice actually!!
But we did get woken up in the early hours by a load of animals outside the tent...with the help of the rest of the group the next morning, we all figured we thought we heard a dingo chasing and killing a wild pig through our camp site...and then the dingo panting around our tents! It scared the s**t out of us!! First stop for the new day was "Twin Falls". We had to take a boat trip up the river to get to the falls, where previously you could have swam up it...but they've recently discovered a saltie living in the river, so have stopped swimming for obvious resons...which was completely fine with me!! The Falls themselves were amazing though...much taller than I had imagined, though not flowing too fast, as it was the dry season, but they still looked stunning! I could have sat there all day staring at them! ...But we couldn't...we had to catch the boat back, and trek along the rocky riverbank to "Jim Jim Falls". These were supposed to be the more spectacular of the two, though I was a little disappointed...they had dried up to virtually a trickle, though we did get to swim here...no salties this time...just freshwater crocs instead!! So while they sunbathed by the side of the pool, we braved it and had a quick swim...all completely safe, apparently!?
Back on the tour bus, that was almost the end of our Kakadu tour...a weird thing, but the tour guide we had happened to be the same guide I had had previously on Fraser Island on the east coast of Australia 2 years ago!? Strange!! Another "post-tour" night at the "Vic Hotel" was had, and it was almost time for us to leave the Northern Territory, bound for Cairns, and our fortnight working on a horse station near Cairns!!
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