Kakadu 🔥

Hi family and friends 🌼

Thinking of you all ☔

Entering the Northern Territory, it was hard not to notice the roadsides and landscapes blackened by fire, with toxic looking smoke often on the horizon. Now the wet season is over, it’s full on hazard reduction and the NT rule is … ‘don’t bother reporting fires until August, unless property or land values are threatened’.

It’s a challenge ignoring open range fires 🔥

We arrived in Katherine and absolutely raided the supermarket, guzzling chocolate milk in line and drooling over a trolley loaded with fresh food. What a luxury. 🍚🍄🍅

We found a 💭secret camp spot about 20ks out of town, just near Katherine Gorge. The sun was setting and the surrounding grasses were golden and blowing in the breeze.  Our little underwater camera didn’t quite capture the moment but, behind John, you can see a little. ⤵

Talking to you,  mum xx

One afternoon, sitting around reading and fire spotting on the opposite ridge,🔥 we noticed our secret spot was getting pretty smoky.  Casually looking over our shoulders, we beheld a sky obliterated by dense smoke.   ℅®¥^°:¥’&*+!

As John checked the ridge, I panicked up, I mean packed up and phoned the Helicopter depot just up the road.  The guy reassured me … it was the usual reduction burn to annihilate long dry grass, it wouldn’t jump the main Gorge road but, because no-one knew we were there, maybe consider moving ?🚗🚎💨

First thing next morning we headed in to Katherine Gorge.

From the highest lookout 🔭

From the cantilevered lookout we could see people swimming across and after climbing back down, the rangers asked if we could point out where the swimmers were. They then headed down river to search for them. 🐊🐊🐊

🚗🚎

Plan A: 📞Thanks, Jennifer, for organising our 📷 replacement camera battery from Erina xx A courier collected the parcel from Frank’s work in Sydney, a pilot flew it to Darwin, a truck driver drove the parcel 300ks to Katherine and the Info Centre lady signed for it.  Nobody involved will ever know it was the wrong battery, except for the lady who sold it to Jen. 👎

Plan B:  📢 By-pass Kakadu, drive straight to Darwin to buy a camera as it would be an absolute gamble visiting Kakadu with only a 2″x 3″ underwater toy. 📷  Jason & Ally are flying up to come camping with us soon, so we’ll check Darwin out then . ✈😸

The Kakadu turn off sign was fabulous. We hadn’t yet charged the camera to take a pic but these were the 3 exciting words …      ⬅Humpty Doo⬅Kakadu⬅Jabiru.

We came in the northern end, nearest to Darwin. The whole Kakadu triangle was just an ordinary road, not very scenic .. but each turn off takes you into another world.

This is going to be all about the animals, soo exciting 🐃🐍🐦🐢🐞

💋 Shirl … your bucket list ✔

Along the northern Arnhem Highway end of Kakadu, Window to the Wetlands was a fabulous interactive learning experience. There is a ladder to climb in the dark to stick your head through a hole and experience life as a mudcrab. As I turned my head around in crabmazement, too late I realized a large hungry wetlands bird was behind me … so fun. The Ranger gave a little talk and one lady asked if the mosquito’s were normally this bad. 30 itching, mozzie ravaged visitors went quiet as the Ranger said yes, and announced we had all now become part of the Kakadu food chain. 🙉

Fogg Dam was on the way to our crocodile boat trip … it was like being thrown intothewild. Someone had scrawled 🐊 ‘Do not get out of your vehicle’  on the single lane road surface that crossed through the dam, which was ominous, considering we were already part of the food chain. The narrow road was only a metre above water level with beautiful wetlands all around and we still had the van behind us, which looked ridiculous. Who cares, we were suddenly taking pics of wonderful birds from the car window and fighting over the binnocs, totally chanelling Jane Hathoway from Beverley Hillbillies.📷

Old blue eyes 💙

Snowy

🚗🚎💨 Adelaide River Croc Cruise

We were already booked, running late but they won’t cast off if they see your dust on the horizon.

📢 The real Cap’n Morgan was almost as salty as the crocs. He found big Brutus for us 🐊, totally massive and into soaking everybody with water. Who doesn’t love being splashed by a ravenous 5 metre croc ? 🚿

Geeez 💦

Cap’n Morgan has everything under control Shirl

🍖 a la Captain Morgan

🚗🚎💨

Shady Camp was worth the 100ks round trip on dirt, it had the lot, everything you would hope to experience. A crocodile hide, river side camping, fishing if you were brave and danger everywhere you turned. The only way to cool off was stand on the ‘barrage’, a causeway across Marys River. There were  Rangers relocating crocs as one of the farmers was losing too many cattle. A chopper pilot counted 137🐊’s surrounding the bait at one of the billabongs. Mary’s River NP has the highest concentration of crocodiles … on earth.🙊

From the hide, we saw 5 massive crocs sunbaking on the opposite bank. No pic as camera was charging and the next day the big Crocs were elsewhere, bumski. 👎 The hide gate I’m trying to shut had a broken latch, would it make much difference ?

👎this is supposed to repel Crocs ?

🐊 That ‘barrage’ crossing is the barrier between salt water and freshwater. Mary’s River NP, 40ks down from the mouth at Van Dieman’s Gulf

Hey .. slow down Wally

Ponytail guy x

❤ Zoom in, little Bee Eater Zorro’sZorro’s

The next destination was also dangerous, Kakadu’s only bakery at Jabiru was low on sausage rolls and the bus pulled in just before us.

15 more  inside and the queue reached the curb 🍞🍩

🚗🚎💨

Nourlangie, unexpected beauty ahead, a foliage tunnel led us through to ⤵

Truly, this was like entering the perfect world scene in Rod Steigers original Time Machine  🐢

🚗🚎💨 Maguk

We heard on the the grapevine the long hike up top would be worth the climb. Our friends Dawn & Paul swam in some amazing rock pools during their big trip so we were keen to make the effort.

🚩 Our new address is ⤵

Rock Pool Cascades, Maguk, Kakadu Highway, Kakadu, NT, 0822.

Plus, swimming down there has the usual risks ⤵🐊

You can swim all day long up here ⤴

Shirl, it’s getting dark

I can’t hear you

still can’t hear you 💕

On the walk back to camp, this little guy was hopping along in front of us.

It was a total privilege, thank you 💑

You’re welcome 🌎

Kakadu seems a modern day dreamtime experience, the sounds are loud like we’re all used to, just different. The kookaburra’s laugh, but in a different dialect. Thanks for taking a peek, it was fabulous… hey xx

Love from John & Shirl xx

PS: I don’t know how to deflect any links I’m sorry, they are not authorised. xx