Monday, June 23, 2014

Day 31 - Jabiru to Cooinda (Kakadu National Park)

An early start for Greg and I this morning as we were booked on a 9am cruise on the East Alligator River, and given we had arranged to leave our van on site past checkout time, we had to pack it up and be ready to just hitch when we came back.

All went well, and by 8:45am we were at the Upstream Boat Ramp. There was another couple there and as it turns out, it was only the four of us on the tour, which made it lovely and personalised. The cruise was led by Aboriginals from Arnhem Land and the guide was excellent, telling us wonderful stories of the flora and fanua, and some of their customs. Naturally, we also saw heaps of crocodiles.
 
(look closely at his back left foot - he lost it in a fight)

The scenery was magnificent as we cruised upstream. We passed sandy embankments and vertical rocky cliffs dropping into the river. On the way upstream, the country to the left of the river was Arnhem Land (dedicated to the Aboriginals, white Australians need a permit to visit it) and to the right was Kakadu National Park.
 
 On this tour, we were lucky enough to stop off at Arnhem Land. We were allowed to walk around for a bit, and visit this freshwater waterhole (below) where some female crocodiles lay their eggs in October.

 Robert, our guide, showed us how he makes his spears and weapons and woomera (throwing device) and then showed us how he uses them. Below, he threw this spear 70 metres clear across the river!
On our way back to the boat ramp, we passed this croc who had been in a recent fight with another croc and had these recent injuries to his back right leg.

We also saw some rock art on the Arnhem Land side.

The cruise was fantastic and we really enjoyed it. We then headed back to Jabiru, filled up with fuel and collected our van for the very short drive down to Cooinda, for us to explore this southern end of the National Park. We arrived before lunch and set up, before settling in for a a quiet afternoon of washing, some short walks, relaxing, updating the blog and the Thomas' enjoyed the pools. Dinner of chicken parmagianas and a very red sunset due to the smoke from all the burning off and we are about to watch Crocodile Dundee, after seeing some of the sites where it was filmed yesterday.

posted by Tracey @ 6:29 pm

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home