Kakadu National Park: Rock Art & Birds

Yesterday was a day of travel—flight from Cairns to Darwin delayed 3 hours (good thing for cards!), then a 3+-hour drive to Kakadu National Park. This is the dry season in Australia’s wet tropics, and while it is so much warmer than our other destinations (mid-90), at least it is not humid.

Today, we zipped off to catch a ranger talk that turned out to be cancelled, but we still had a great walk around the rocky outcropping of Nourlangie, viewing cave art and stopping at lookout points. The rock art here is so much more detailed than the art we saw around Uluru. The indigenous people around Uluru view the world with a bird’s eye view (dot paintings of the landscape, e.g.). We’ll have to ask a ranger about the distinction.

In the afternoon we walked around a billabong — water hole/wetlands area. We were pleasantly surprised with how much bird activity there was. On our 2-hour walk around the billabong, we saw pelicans, jabiru (a stork), egrets, geese and many others. What we did not see—fortunately—were crocodiles, which the signs warned us about every 100 yards or so. The crocs stay in the water or within 5 meters of the water’s edge, so we knew where to put our feet!もっと詳しく