Darwin & Kakadu: Tragic and Beautiful

Moving on from Queensland, we flew 1700km West and a little bit north to Darwin capital of the Northern Territory, which has vast areas of tropical Savana and even larger deserts The Savana became famous worldwide with Crocodile Dundee, and sure enough the area is full of crocodiles, to the extent that despite the intense heat and humidity, its not possible to swim in any river or stream.
Aborigines make up about 10% of the population . Some do well, but many ( probably most) do not. Huge problems with alcoholism in adults and violence in schools. I read in the local newspaper that the teachers, who volunteer to work in remote areas, all are on the point of giving up in at least 1 school (Tennent Creek). That was true last time I was here, and so the problems seem, despite multiple efforts, to be intractable.
Darwin itself is something of a sleepy provincial town of about 140,000, many of whom are foreigners from Europe and Asia. We just took it easy there, but we did use the time to teach about why it's called Darwin. It was named after him when the Beagle visited in 1839, a good 20 years before he released his theory on the evolution of the species. Darwin was also famously bombed heavily in WWII, and later, it was flattened again by a hurricane that they call cyclones here.
After Darwin, we travel in our hire car 300km to Kakadu National Park, where we are staying 4 nights in a high-end glamping site. It's a bit like we had in Masai Mara in Kenya, just better beds and aircon.
Today, we headed out into the park, and I saw my 1st wild kangaroo and buffalo . The kids found the site of large numbers of fruit bats the size of cats most interesting.Read more