Kakadu & a near miss with a croc

After 2 weeks in Nungalinya, it was time to move on.

Kakadu was our next destination. We stayed in there for 3 nights. Our friends, Richard and Julie were going there too but needed to get some mechanical things seen to first thing before meeting up with us later. First off we went to the Window on the Wetlands display centre wish was very informative and has some wonderful views looking down over the wetlands. From there went right to the eastern most point of Kakadu, to go and see the Aboriginal Rock Art at Ubirr.

It took a short leisurely walk to see all the artwork. It is hard to understand some of the images and the meaning behind them and then others such as the fish and animals have so much anatomical details that it is difficult to believe that an ancient culture could come up with such accuracy and understanding. The walks and such were a delight though the heat was building up. I think the Top End doesn’t know what winter is!

We drove back to East Alligator River to a nearby picnic area and Cahill’s Crossing to have lunch and were fortunate to be spotted & joined by Richard & Julie on their way in. After lunch we went for a short walk to the river crossing and foolishly I enjoyed just standing in the edge of the water to cool my hot feet, only to be admonished by Bob. Others up on a platform that advised us that they could see that there was a crocodile in the water only some 15 metres away from me... duh...Though it was on the other side of the river crossing, they do move quite fast if they want to. We then went up on the viewing platform and saw the crocodile for ourselves and found a second one sunbaking a bit further away and yet a baby crocodile that was only about 30-45 cm long...I guess you would say cute, but these are still meat eaters too! Oh by the way on the photo above, see the sand above the upturned car, well there is a crocodile there sunbaking and the crocodile that was nearest to my toosties is just near the other side of the water but same side as us. You may see a faint smudge of dark in the water.

This is the close up of the sunbaking crocodile on that far sand bank that is in the photo just below!

And that car... it overturned just the week before. The water may have been a bit deeper but certainly it was flowing fast and thus the driver was over confident and overturned. It still has four new tyres on it. I wonder why no one has knocked them off.. Ha... ha... crocs gulp. Good anti theft devices???

From here we finally went onto set up our campsite at Merl, the campsite nearest the eastern border of Kakadu. Our friends went onto to Ubirr to catch up on the rock art.