Gismo Queen and her King

Day 32 - Kakadu National Park

Tonight we ate dinner in the park bistro and saw the news about the storms in Melbourne. Apart from due concern for our respective mothers and appropriate properties, our biggest weather concern is that it actually cooled down enough last night to put on jumpers during our movie night.

During Greg's and my reading of "Outback Heart", we have obviously heard a lot about Crocodile Dundee. Then during our visit here in Kakadu, we are aware that much of the movie was filmed here. Harrison has never seen the movie so Paul downloaded it and last night we had a movie night in front of our caravan. We brought the TV outside, made tea and coffee (or red wine!) and settled in for our movie! Even in the outback, we can have all the mod cons!

Today we decided to try Jim Jim Falls - one of the most famous attractions here in Kakadu. It's a 60km drive from where we're staying, all gravel and you must have a 4WD to attempt it (the last 10km is pretty ordinary to say the least). Then it's a 1km walk in, most of it rock climbing. So we thought we'd give it a go. We set Greg up in the caravan park with lunch, (audio) books, iPads, snacks and drinks and we headed off, trying to beat the heat of the day. The first 50km of the gravel road was OK, although a bit corrugated. I enjoyed not having to drive as with five of us, I just piled in the back of their car with the kids. Then the last ten kilometres was on a goat track, but we made it. Then started the walk. It started out Ok as a path, but then more and more rocks came along and soon we were rock climbing. Along the way, the view was to entice us of what was to come, as we got deeper and deeper into a very steep gorge.

After about a kilometre, with rocks that had gotten bigger than we were, we came out at this beach. We had the beach to ourselves at this stage, so we all went in for a swim, as we had gotten warm on the walk. The water was refreshing to say the least.
We then did some more rock climbing to get around the other side of the pool, and down to the plunge pool. It was amazing - and amazingly cold. It barely gets sun as at this pointy end of the gorge, with walls that must be several hundred metres high. Paul and Harrison swam across to the waterfall (which would have been over a hundred metres, and so cold!).
It was a truly awesome place to visit, but we were all pretty tired by the time we walked out, and drove home. So we went out to dinner at the bistro and move night has started again with Crocodile Dundee II showing tonight!

posted by Tracey @ 8:52 pm