Kakadu

Woke up early this morning to meet the tour bus which was to take us out to Kakadu for the day. Knew it was going to be a long day as it took over 3 hours to get there, and wasn’t really sure what to expect. Would it just be more of the same as what we’d seen in the NT already?

Turned out the answer was no.

Our first stop was a quick coffee break where they also had a couple of buffalo and rather shy crocodiles. Then onto the town of Jabiru where we hung out at the hotel (croc shaped!) for a bit and looked at some overpriced aboriginal artwork. A few people left us here temporarily as they got sucked into taking a massively expensive plane trip over Kakadu (it was clear when comparing with the prices listed at the resort that the tour driver was taking a massive commission).

Then it was onto the wetland cruise - easily the highlight of the day. We were told it would be around an hour and a half to two hours and honestly I thought we’d be a bit bored. Far from it though - it was non stop interesting stuff to see. An amazing amount of wildlife, birds, crocs! Etc. and unlike the Adelaide River cruise this was in no way staged. Being in the national park meant the crocs couldn’t be fed, so they didn’t just swim up to the boat expecting meat off the side. Nope, these guys were catching fish in front of our eyes and snagging wallabies off the riverbank right in front of us. We waited a few minutes for it to start thrashing the prey around in its mouth in an attempt to tear small bits off to eat and we were well rewarded. Amazing stuff. Also I’m not a birdwatcher but I still had a great time spotting all the different birds - geese, brolgas, kingfishers, ducks. It was fantastic.

Next stop was a pretty reasonable buffet lunch at a resort in the middle of nowhere. Then onto a short walk into the bush to see a heap of aboriginal rock art from a 1000 or so years ago.

Long trip home but we made it in around 8. Headed out straight away for some well earned dinner and an ice cream (decided to go all out on our last official night knowing the diet would need to resume very shortly). Quick walk around the block and we came home and crashed.Read more