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| Our Kia long-distance touring SUV |
Yesterday we drove from Darwin to Jabiru in the Kakadu National Park, a distance of about 250 km mostly eastward across flat open country, on a good two lane highway. Kakadu covers 20,000 square kilometers so is a huge area. The view from the road is mainly of fairly open land populated with long grass, gum trees and termite mounds. It is frequently blackened by fires, most of which are deliberately lit early in the dry season to prevent huge natural fires taking hold and doing more damage. This area has one of the highest rates of lightning strikes in the world, so fires are not uncommon. The aboriginal people have been burning the land like this for thousands of years.
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| Gum trees, and termite hills three or four metres high. |
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| Smoke from fires smouldering along the side of the road. |
The roads was generally straight and flat, and there was hardly any traffic, so with no radio station or cell phone coverage for long distances we found ourselves napping ("resting our eyes") when not doing the driving. We saw our first "road train" during this drive; a truck with four trailers which provides a bit of challenge if you want to overtake!
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| A four-trailer road train thundering by |
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| Most of the road trains we saw had four trailers. |
There are long stretches of nothing out here, as we found when we started hankering for our next coffee. It is just the start of the tourist season, so the information centre by the Kakadu sign (below) was not open. We realised it is still quiet at this time of year, as for example when we met our guide for our "Spirit of Kakadu Adventure" day tour we were the only two there.
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| Welcome to Kakadu! |
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| The Crocodile Mercure Hotel, Jabiru, Kakadu. |
Kakadu undergoes a drastic change from the wet season to the dry. In the wet season huge areas are flooded and many roads are closed. Now most are open, but a few are still out of bounds, so our guide Harim drove us fairly large distances to show us the sights, because some of the more convenient areas are still closed. The outstanding geological feature of this area is the 300 metre high escarpment which separates the lowlands from the higher plateau, and runs for about 500 kilometres roughly north / south. Millions of years ago it was a cliff at the edge of the ocean. Many of the tourism sites are points along the escarpment where waterfalls flow over the edge and into gorges and pools below.
Harim took us first to Maguk or "Barramundi Gorge Falls". This included a pleasant walk up the creek to the head of the valley where a waterfall drops into a large pool.
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| If you are eaten, you can't say they didn't warn you. These signs are everywhere. |
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| We had to wade through this bit. |
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| Sandy stretches, eroded from the sandstone cliffs. |
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| At Maguk we had a swim in the pool. Very nice, but I couldn't quite forget about the crocodiles... |
After Maguk we drove further south to reach Gunlom, which has an even larger pool and a much higher waterfall. Here there is a camping ground and extensive picnic areas, and there were many more people out for the day. The 300 metre cliffs are awe inspiring.
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| Gunlom |
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| Gunlom again, with Sue in the distance. |
Here we climbed the steep track to the top of the escarpment, and were rewarded by a coolish breeze and a view out across the land.
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| It doesn't look very far up...? |
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| The view from the top of the escarpment. Kakadu as far as the eye can see.. |
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| The pools above the waterfall at Gunlom. |
Harim stopped to show us a termite hill up close, beside the road. We passed thousands of these, so there must be billions of termites out there. I learned that termites are NOT ants, not even like ants - more like a cousin of the cockroach. You never see them because they cannot stand the heat of the sun so do most of their foraging at night. They eat grass and leaves and wood, a bit like the role filled by large animals in other ecosystems.
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| Termite hill. |
I worked out that Harim drove us about 270 km today, so there was a lot of driving per place visited. It's an important thing to remember if you travelling in Australia.
