Kakadu

"People need to come here and relax, sit on the country, feel the spirits of this country, and go home and feel the same way" -- Natasha Nadji, Bunidj Clan

Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory

There is a lot to see in Kakadu, and it will touch you in a special way. The park is divided by an escarpment ranging between 60 and 300 metres in height, on the top is the Arnhem Land Plateau, lower down, the billabongs, monsoon forests and flood plains. On the Plateau, Stone Country. Two rivers pass through the park, the water plunging over the escarpment making many waterfalls over it's length.

Lots of swimming holes, and of course salties, a plethora of bird life. Lots of hiking. And lots of Indig Rock Art, some 5,000 known sites. A further 10,000 sites are thought to exist in the park.

The best place to see the rock art is at Ubirr, in the park's north east. Here there is rock art of different styles and vastly different ages spread over a wide accessible area. There is a painting of a Thyracine, the Tasmanian Tiger which became extinct on the mainland some 2000-3000 years ago. There are paintings of white men from the 1880s, buffalo hunters. Clearly clothed, their hands in their pockets or smoking a pipe. Paintings of life size barramundi, they used to be so much larger than they are today. Perhaps we fish too much. Pocket Fish the local indig people now call them. They used to require two men to carry one. Stories of hunts. Stories of discipline. Stories of the spirits. Anatomical drawings of turtles to educate the younger folk as to the best bits to eat. Mimi paintings very high on the roof of an overhang, near impossible to access, the very tall Mimi spirits are said to have painted them. In one place the paintings are up to 14 painting layers deep. The age is difficult to determine, context is the key. Style, what it depicts. There is no organic matter in the paint used here, so carbon dating cannot be used as it is used in the south of the continent.

Archaeological digs at one shelter site suggest occupation for at least the last 20,000 years. Axes, stone tools, grinding stones and grinding holes, discarded food bones. The complexity of the artwork reflects the environment at the time. 20,000 years ago the land was very different, a sparse ice capped planet, not much food here. 6,000 years ago occupation increased, as did the painting complexity. A changing environment. Only in the last 2,000 to 3,000 years did the Wet and Dry Season cycle we are familiar with begin, seas rose, life was abundant, so indig populations flourished.

We did a few hikes, one to the top of Jim Jim Falls. Only 7km return, it was a tough climb up the escarpment during the hot afternoon, then a walk over the stone country, two swim in one of the upper pools. Another hike through monsoon forest to a swimming hole.

Crocs a plenty. In the billabongs, on the flood plains, in the rivers and pools. Twin Falls was closed due to a croc attack (it was a just a nibble), no, not really, just closed because the salties returned after being removed. They remove salties from the big tourist sites, otherwise tourists couldn't see these places.