Exploring Kakadu

Finally a day with no driving! As we'd hired a 2WD motorhome, there were a few places we really wanted to see but were inaccessible to us - at the end of long, dirt 4WD tracks. So we'd booked ourselves a day trip to see a couple of the sights.

After joining our group of mostly retirees and a young German/Dutch couple, ably lead by Ranger Adam, we set off towards Maguk (formerly Barramundi Gorge), about 90 minutes away in the southern part of Kakadu. After turning off the paved highway it was pretty rough with lots of corrugations in the dirt road, so I'm definitely glad we didn't try and sneak the van down it! We had a brief bit of morning tea in the carpark before heading off down the last 1km walk to the falls.

Mostly just wandering along through forest paths before a little bit of clambering over some boulders - in which none of the pensioners stacked it, but I managed to! Just lost a little bit of skin from my elbow and a scrape along the side of the GoPro, plus a bit of wounded pride. Maguk falls were definitely worth the fall though! The water isn't super high, only about 20m, but the pool itself was very large (several Olympic pools long and a couple wide), and very deep. The water was lovely and warm, with a couple of large rocks in the water providing platforms for standing.

Although we couldn't be sure there were no crocodiles, Ranger Adam pointed out the white buoy at the water's edge. Apparently saltwater crocs absolutely can't resist biting the buoys, so you know that if you arrive somewhere and the buoy has been bitten, there's probably a croc in there. Swam over to the base of the falls and perched on a rock ledge to watch the water thundering over; such an impressive sight!

After our swim we headed back to the truck and grabbed our lunch of wraps, chicken and salads. We seemed to hang around a bit longer than either of us wanted, but in a group of 16 mostly retirees it wasn't the quickest group to wrangle.

Set off back north towards Jim Jim Falls, which again took a couple of hours. The road in to the campground was fine, but the last couple of kilometres via a single-lane unsealed road was absolute torture - driving at basically walking pace, and stopping every couple of minutes to pass other vehicles. But eventually we arrived in one piece.

Jim Jim Falls is a much tougher walk - basically a kilometre of clambering over boulders to reach the plunge pool. Some of the pensioners opted out but others pressed on; Shandos and I left them to their own devices with Ranger Adam, as we didn't want to miss out on maximising our swimming time!

It wasn't a tough walk but you had to be very careful, picking spots and striding over crevasses etc. Difficult going, but not hard if that makes any sense. Again it was well worth the effort - Jim Jim Falls are much taller than Maguk, probably closer to 40m, and fall straight down into a large round plunge pool. It's in the back of a gorge so doesn't get much sun during the day, and the water was quite a bit colder. But we still had a dip, and enjoyed cooling off after the walk.

But all good things must come to an end; eventually we had to hop out, dry off and take the long walk back to the truck. Easier going on the way back, and we had a good conversation with the young Dutch/German couple who were about to drive their campervan to Brisbane over the next 2 weeks before heading back to Europe. Bus journey back was long and boring - we'd been around the north of Kakadu quite a bit by now and although the scenery is nice, the best bits are well off the road (or in the extreme edges like Ubirr). I dozed off a couple of times!

We ate at the Cooinda Campground restaurant for dinner, where we both had local delicacies. Shandos had a plate of kangaroo fillet, marinated crocodile, fried barramundi and buffalo meatballs; while I had a pizza with crocodile sausage, buffalo mince and bush spices. It was nice enough but I wasn't a huge fan of the crocodile sausage - it would've been nicer as chunks I think!Read more