Nights 144 - 153: Doing Kakadu

NIGHT  144  -  GUNGURUL CAMPING AREA, KAKADU NATIONAL PARK.

It took only a short drive into Kakadu before an unfortunate dichotomy presented itself.  It was a dichotomy of ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’, although not your typical ‘haves’ nor your typical ‘have nots’.  This dichotomy wasn’t about race or money or power, although Kakadu would foreground these things during the trip.  This dichotomy hinged upon wheels.

It was at the turn-off to Gunlom Falls, a mere 10kms into Kakadu proper, that a realisation struck – in Kakadu our plush ‘bago becomes a liability.  The track to Gunlom Falls is unsealed.  It’s rocky, rutted and, while not a designated 4WD only track, a quick internet trawl reveals it to be beyond the scope of the ‘bago.  Any attempt would be foolhardy. Something necessary and expensive would almost certainly break.

In Kakadu what you need is a 4WD and a tent.  The age or make or model of 4WD doesn’t matter, as long as it is well maintained.  And it doesn’t really matter how big or how old the tent is either, as long as it provides shelter from the mozzies and the night-time chill.  These are the ‘haves’.  If you have these Kakadu opens out to you.  If you have these there are hundreds of kilometres of corrugated tracks awaiting your adventures.

Most of the places of interest and beauty in Kakadu are like Gunlom Falls.  They expect commitment.  If you want to share their beauty you have to get gritty and get in there.  A lumpy 2WD motorhome has no grit.   Kakadu demands more than the plushness of a Winnebago and the sleek glide of a tar-sealed road.  Our ‘bago is exactly the wrong vehicle to take into Kakadu.  Even caravans or long fifth wheelers are more practical choices.  

As I sit here, in the early afternoon, in a pointless, easily accessed, nothing of much interest overnight camping area, I’ve watched as a fifth wheeler lumbered in.  I’ve watched as it took the better part of an hour for it to be properly set up.  Normally, upon watching this process, I’m thankful for the ‘bago; thankful that we really can just pull into a space and shut off the motor and hey presto we’re instantly set-up and comfortable.  At the fifth wheeler, however, the elderly couple have just climbed into their tow vehicle, a 4WD ute, and driven away.  The bastards.  We remain here, the only people in the campground, seeking adventure yet shackled to the ‘bago.

If you are wondering why I sit whining in the ‘bago  when we are fortunate enough to have a motor bike with us, or wondering why we don’t just ride the Vespa in to Gunlom Falls, then I’m here to inform you that a Vespa is the 2 wheel equivalent of a Winnebago.  It is plush and comfortable and happy along a bitumen road but practically useless anywhere else.  It is our second example of exactly the wrong vehicle to take into Kakadu.

Vehicle issues aside, I didn’t want to give up on seeing Gunlom Falls. As I understood it we still had a couple of options. 

OPTION 1 – hitchhiking.  We could park the ‘bago at the start of the dirt road and wait until another vehicle came along.  I doubted it would take long.  We could then get them to stop and, if they had room, hitch a lift into the falls.  We could even offer them a few bucks.  We could hitch a lift back in the afternoon, whether with the same people or not wouldn’t matter.  It’s a good plan.

OPTION 2  has many similarities with option 1 except that we do our ‘hitchhiking’ from a camping area through chatting to people.  This would take longer, organising it for the following day.  We could possibly post a sign somewhere:  ‘wanting to go to Gunlom Falls tomorrow.  Willing to share costs.  See Alan at site 33.’  This is also a pretty good plan.

But we didn’t do either. 

So, as far as Kakadu is concerned, we can only access the most homogenised of sights and sites.  Undoubtedly we will still see some good stuff but we will probably be seeing it as a small part of a large crowd.  The fact is, wherever the ‘bago can access so too can the big tour buses.  It’s hardly the stuff of high adventure but, looking back and being honest with ourselves, a motorhome like ours has never been the vehicular choice of the adventurous.

(I give Gungurral Camping Area 2 stars out of 5.  It offered a walk up a hill to a lookout, which we did.  It was nice but unspectacular.  It offered a walk past a serious crocodile warning sign to a river that had stopped flowing.  We didn’t know the river had stopped flowing ‘til we got there.  We turned around and walked back again.)

NIGHTS  145 – 148  -  COOINDA LODGE, KAKADU

Here the ‘bago makes sense.  This is no bush camp on the side of a road.  There’s a restaurant, a little shop, two swimming pools.  It’s an opulent splash of excess beside the Yellow Waters billabong and we are here for four days.  It was another of those ‘4 nights for the price of 3’ deals that we seem to find irresistible.  We reversed in among Britz and Maui and Hertz hire vans and settled in for a long stay.

 Yesterday’s realisation congealed into a resolve that we had to spend money.  If we wanted Kakadu experiences beyond comparing landscaped swimming pools then we had to get out there somehow -  amongst it -  and that involved a tour of some description.

So we booked a Yellow Waters cruise leaving at dawn, but that was two days away.  We talked about the possibility of me doing a fishing trip or of both of us taking a day tour to Jim Jim Falls but never followed them through.  Thankfully Shana then went to the laundry.

 

 

Caravan park laundries are mini libraries for many things, including advertising pamphlets.  Because you’re waiting for your washing to finish (because you’re always a little early) you sit and your mind wanders.  Then your eye is caught by the glossy colours and bold proclamations of these pamphlets.  Your mind becomes more directed.

Shana excitedly interrupted my apathy by entering the ‘bago and waving a pamphlet about.  This attracted my interest (and offered a cool little breeze which I’d have liked to continue).

“I want to do this” she said, enlivened.

I read it and I wanted to do it too.  Basically it offered an afternoon spent with an Aboriginal guide, driving through the bush and collecting traditional bush food, and an evening alongside a billabong preparing the food and cooking a feast in an earth oven.  It was a small tour.  No more than 20 people at a time.

It was almost 12 noon.  The tour left daily at 1pm.  Shana rang and we lucked out.  We jagged two seats for that day (the other days were all booked out).

The Animal Tracks Safari is run in co-ordination with a buffalo farm that exists unheralded in Kakadu.  Aboriginal people generally like the taste of buffalo meat but buffalos are an introduced species that have a malignant effect on the natural environment.  A decision was made in the 80s to get rid of buffalo from Kakadu, which was carried out by shooting thousands of them with high powered rifles from low flying helicopters.  There are very few left now and the land is better for it.  Without buffalo around, many wetlands have regenerated.  The Buffalo Farm, however, on behalf of Aboriginal peoples, was granted permission to farm buffalo for food.  It’s a noble idea but requires funding.  The buffalos aren’t sold but given away – two or three per day.  Animal Tracks Safari plays a part in raising revenue, taking people through some of the -hundreds of acres of the farm, teaching them about a few traditional Aboriginal food sources and how to acquire them. 

It was one of the best experiences we’ve ever had.

Patsy was our guide, an old Aboriginal woman who has known the surrounding land since she was a kid.  Sean drove the bus, a ‘whitefella’ with a vast knowledge himself.  While the light remained we dug for freshwater mussels in a creekbank, remaining alert for crocs and an approaching scrubfire.  We foraged for water chestnuts in a dried up wetland; in the scrub we ate tender leave shoots from the insides of  sandpalms and collected and ate green tailed ants (which are medicinal, used to relieve headache).  We went to a melaluca forest and gathered paperbark to be used in the cooking  and for carrying water.  We had two magpie geese that had been shot before we arrived that had to plucked and prepared for the fire.  Pasty sat cross legged and deftly cut the skeleton and guts from the geese using a precise series of cuts.  Buffalo meat was also prepared along with sweet potato, yams and damper, all cooked in a hole in the ground beside a billabong that, as the sun set, was visited by thousands of water birds.  The sight of all these hungry birds and the sounds they made en masse is something I will never forget – an urgent cloud of feathers and squawks descending from above to perch on the water’s edge, all shrouded in the orange glow of a Kakadu sunset.  Magical.

 

 While the meal cooked Patsy demonstrated how to make string using palm fronds and how to turn that string into baskets.  As mossies arrived we were shown which tree to strip leaves from to throw onto the fire as a repellent.  Everyone was covered in dust and dirt and smoke and most had a full belly and deep feelings of awe and wonder. (Some participants didn’t engage much.  Their problem.)  We drove home in the dark, shining torches on dingoes that were slinking into the area we’d just vacated, looking for scraps.  We saw nocturnal birds and tiny night frogs that live in low palm trees.  Patsy told us stories of her youth as we drove through the dark, although she was very hard to understand and Sean had to virtually retell the stories so we could make sense of them.  What came through strongly was the reality that Aboriginal culture cannot be separated from the land and how ‘Aboriginality’ is enacted  through locationally specific signifiers – when certain trees flower, when the rain starts/stops, changes in ecosystems throughout the year, geographical features.  I became aware of the stupidity of thinking that Aboriginal people can be removed from their land and be happily ‘re-homed’ in an area they have no connection to, nor deep understanding of, regardless of whether other Aboriginal tribes live there happily.  I may be of European descent but don’t bloody re-home me in Belgium.  Beyond the basics I’d have little idea of what’s going on no matter how often I was informed that the surrounding landscape should make little difference.

We returned from The Animal Tracks Safari content but tired.  We had to arise early for our dawn cruise.

The Yellow Waters cruise is spectacular, especially at dawn as the mist rises from the water across the profile of the rising sun, but it felt a bit insipid compared with the previous day.  It’s a pity that the two become compared but it can’t really be helped.  The truth is that, at Yellow Waters, Shana and I didn’t receive either the deep swell of awe and appreciation nor the electric jolts of realisation that we got from the Animal Tracks Safari.  Sitting safely in one of four very large punts as the guide points out various crocs by name and various water birds by the fact that they are there every day was interesting, don’t get me wrong, and the guide was informative and engaging, but it lacked resonance.  Actually, I think it lacked interaction.  As a schoolteacher, and borrowing from good old Bloom’s Taxonomy, I’d say it’s the difference between ‘remembering’, being talked at and trying to grasp what you are told, and ‘applying’, learning by doing, trial and error, self-evaluation through the attempt.  And, as all schoolteachers should know, a contented class is a class busily applying rather than one sitting passively and (probably not) listening.

 

The rest of the time at Cooinda lodge was spent lazing around the large pool, reading or daydreaming. More than once I paid $3.50 for a can of coke at the little shop but refused to pay $27.50 for a hamburger and chips at the restaurant.  We did get a breakfast as part of the dawn Yellow Water Cruise so we filled up on buffet that day.  A cake or two even made it back to the ‘bago for afternoon tea.

(I give The Cooinda Lodge 3 stars out of 5.  It was a comfortable place to stay.  It had water to immerse ourselves in. Once booked in, though, it became too expensive.  Everything was priced overly high, almost to the degree of profiteering.  Like an airport.  Twenty seven bucks for a hamburger.  Get real.  Plus I think somebody stole my $30 designer singlet from off the clothesline. )

NIGHT  149  -  MUIRELLA CAMPING GROUND, KAKADU

Muirella is a bush camping ground near Nourlangie Rocks, the site of some important Aboriginal cave paintings and rock art.  As a campground it offered the basics for ten bucks per person per night.  It had showers that worked okay.  While there we bumped into some people that we’d met months before, back at Workmans Beach near Agnes Waters.  They were camped next to us there but we hadn’t talked much.  Not sure why.  We became more acquainted here, sharing fivesies together.  They were cool.  We spoke from similar positions, following a similar trajectory.  That was pleasant.

 

At Nourlangie Rocks our education about things Aboriginal continued.  We timed our visit to coincide with a series of talks being given by a National Park’s ranger.  We followed him to three separate sites where he spoke about three separate (though entwined) aspects of Aboriginality.

The ranger’s name was Christian and, while we stood before a rock painting of a dreaming story, he explained succinctly how the Aboriginal concept of ‘kinship’ works.  He brought out a chart to help explain it.   It’s a complicated process let me tell you.  In essence, though, Christian explained how the terms  ‘brother’, ‘sister’, ‘uncle’, ‘aunty, and ‘mother’ have very different meanings than they do in Western culture.  Basically, it doesn’t centre upon family bloodlines as in my culture but rather birth categories.  I can’t go into it here but it went a long way to explaining how, ‘by tribal law’, certain Aboriginal people simply cannot talk to certain other people, depending on their kinship lines. No matter how you try to coerce them or beg them to do it, their law forbids it.  It is fascinating and makes a mockery of the ‘Terra Nullius’ view that Aboriginal cultures have no discernible structure.  As I’ve said, it is a very complex system and one that has been passed down orally for thousands of years.

 

 

 I’m becoming seriously impressed with the intelligence inherent in Aboriginal ways of life.  I’m also becoming aware of how complicated it must be to have to negotiate two very different law systems that rarely mesh.  Tribal law, from the little I understand of it, seeks different obediences than the law of ‘the crown’.  It advocates expectations that are at times in direct conflict with what contemporary Australian ‘society’ expects.   How would you decide which one to adhere to, especially when you consider one has been present and constant within the culture for thousands of years and the other was forced upon you less than 200 years ago and changes at the whim of the government of the day? 

(I give Muirella Camp Ground 2 ½ stars out of 5.  It was dusty and populated by gazillions of mozzies but it was clean and well-tended.)

NIGHT  150  -  KAKADU LODGE, JABIRU.

Kakadu Lodge is a massive resort that, according to legend, has never been full.  It starts with a pool and bar in the middle and then expands out in circles of increasing radius.  Each circle is two camping sites deep, with a road between.  There are at least four circles of powered sites.  The unpowered sites are around the outer extremity.  They keep the water up to it.  It is green, if not exactly lush.

 

We did nothing of note while here.  We went for several swims and went shopping in Jabiru.  We also went to the pie shop which had been recommended to us but it was closed.  It was Darwin Cup day.  They say of The Melbourne Cup that a nation stops to watch it.  Well, regarding The Darwin Cup, the Jabiru Pie Shop stops to watch it.   Maybe it’s only the Jabiru Pie shop because everything else in Jabiru seemed to be opened. Maybe the owners of the pie shop had a horse running.  Who knows.  I didn’t get a pie though.

(I give Kakadu Lodge 4 stars out of 5.  It is what it is – big, generic, semi-plush.  It has free movie screenings some nights and on other nights park rangers give a talk.  There’s heaps of toilets and heaps of showers with hot water.  What more could you want?)

NIGHT 151  -  MERL CAMPGROUND, KAKADU

We actually went to Merl twice, once during the day and again at night.  The daytime visit was timed so that Shana could find out a bit more, and get more practice at, basket weaving and twine making.

We’ve come to appreciate the amount of work that goes into making anything using palm fronds or pandanus.  It’s a laborious time-consuming task.  You need to collect the raw materials, strip them into the basis of twine, roll them together into a decent thickness and so that they join into lengths, then fashion it into the article you are making.  This is without dying the twine (or gathering the materials to make the different coloured dyes).  A small basket could take up to a month to make.  Despite this, or because of it, Shana has taken a strong interest.  She found out about a two hour weaving session organised through the National Park Service and led by two young Aboriginal women from the Injaluk Arts Centre in Gunbalanya.  They’d been brought down from East Arnem Land especially for the workshop.  There was no way we weren’t going to be there.

I found a spot beneath the trees, using my new $5 compass to find north, and sat in the shade while Shana went-a-weaving.   I coated myself in ‘Bushman’s’ while Shana concentrated on creating things. I went and took a few pics and came back again.  I was happy to be out of it.  Shana was equally happy squatting beneath the shelter.  She came back full of admiration for the women teaching her, but wishing she was more adept.  Twine making and weaving requires many years of practise.

 

We then went to Ubirr in the north of the park.  Stone country.  We were going to see more rock art and to watch the sun set from atop the rocks.  Several people had told us that sunset at Ubirr was a ‘must do’. 

It was only okay.  It was packed with school groups and older folk – the school groups were noisy and scurried over the rocks like colonies of yelling ants; the older folk with thier canes and walking sticks had trouble negotiating the skinny uneven rock paths, creating long queues of people behind them losing patience, especially after the sun had set and darkness fell quickly and a whole national park full of mosquitoes came out to feed.  I prefer sunsets over water, although the sun did turn vibrant orange in the haze of burn-off smoke.  I guess it was iconic.

 

The rock art at Ubirr, like the rock art at Nourlangie, is interesting but fading badly, despite attempts to preserve it.  Some of it is already thousands of years old.   Some paintings, however, were painted in the early 1960s, just before Kakadu was declared a national park.  This is as it should be.  The caves and rock walls exist in places that have been used as shelters during wet seasons for thousands of years.  Over time painting on the walls has had a two-fold purpose (at least) – as a way of depicting tribal myths and laws in a culture without (alphabetic) writing, and as a pursuit to while away the hours while the rain pelted down beyond the cave.  Rock paintings were for teaching and rock painting was for fun.  Aboriginal people aren’t spending wet seasons there now and so no new painting is being done.  As such what you see now is art as history but not art as vibrancy of colour and continuing culture, which I think is a pity.  I’d like to see at least one new rock painting commissioned every so often.  This would not detract from the existing paintings or weaken their impact, or not in my opinion anyway.  To me it would add another level of interest being able to compare the old and the new.  And, of course, the new becomes old over time, adding to the longevity of these sites and how they are intrinsic within a continuing Aboriginal culture.  Without the new the old is in danger of fading away completely.

We made our way back to Merl Campground in the dark to find out that there was no lighting in the toilets or showers.  You can (and we did) use a torch in the toilet quite easily.  Showers pose different problems however.  We had a shower in the dark looking toward the positive – at least having no lights attracted no mozzies.  I give Merl campground 3 stars out of 5.  Having no lights was a problem but it is a cheap national park’s camp and they were having problems with their solar set-up.  We’d have been grumpy had we paid $40 bucks but for $10 each paid to a good cause ‘shit happens’.

NIGHT 152 – KAKADU RESORT, JABIRU.

It would appear that we are following a ‘zebra crossing’ pattern in our sleeping arrangements.  Let’s call bush camping ‘black’ and resort camping ‘white’. (You could easily swap what each colour has been attributed to if you want. For example it makes no difference if bush camping is ‘black’ or ‘white’.  The image remains the same).  The patterns goes bush (black), resort (white), bush (black), resort (white), bush (black), resort (white), bush (black) and now resort (white) again.  We didn’t plan it this way but we found it moderately interesting when we realised it. (Now all we need is four Beatles striding out along it, Paul bare-footed).

Anyway, the preceding paragraph demonstrates that I’ve really got nothing to say about Kakadu Resort.  We’ve stayed here before.  We’re back now.  They still have a pool.  The score remains the same.

Cahill’s Crossing is different.  I could write too much about it so I’ll just write a bit.  Get there yourself.

At Cahill’s Crossing crocs cross the road and wait for the tide to change.  High tide floods the road up to 500mm. It sweeps large fish across from the low side to the high side.  The crocs know this and wait.  We counted 9 big-arsed wild crocs waiting at one stage.  As the fish get swept over the crocs go in with mouths open.  They catch the fish and you watch as they cut and grind them into smaller pieces.  It is equal parts disgusting and fascinating.  Sometimes the crocs fight against each other.  It is the best free spectacle in Australia.  Truly.

 

 

NIGHT  153  -  BEATRICE HILL REST AREA, HUMPTY DOO.

Kakadu is a large park serviced by two main roads.  These roads make an angle a bit like a ‘greater than’ symbol.  The road making the top half of the symbol is called The Arnhem Highway.  It starts (or stops) just below Darwin and heads south east to Jabiru.  The second part of the angle is the Kakadu Highway.  It goes south west from Jabiru and joins The Stuart Highway at Pine Creek.

We started ‘at the bottom’ (Pine Creek) which meant we emerged from Kakadu closer to Darwin; Humpty Doo to be exact.

I love the name ‘Humpty Doo’.  Love it.  I’ve long wanted to tell people at parties that I’ve been to Humpty Doo (I’m not the most enigmatic party guest).  And now I can.  I can even tell them that I’ve been to ‘The Window on the Wetlands’ (W.O.T.W.) cultural centre, although I doubt I will.  Maybe it’s because we visited it on the way out of Kakadu that we found W.O.T.W. boring.  Visited on the way in it may serve nicely as an initial contact, easing the viewer gently into a Kakadu experience.  Maybe.  We’ll give it the benefit of the doubt.  W.O.T.W is built on the site of a failed government sponsored rice plantation which then became a failed government sponsored agricultural centre (farm).  One hopes that it doesn’t become a failed government sponsored cultural centre.

The Beatrice Hill rest area was visible from W.O.T.W.  In fact, we commandeered the ‘look out over the wetlands’ binoculars to assess whether Beatrice Hill was a worthwhile option for the evening.  There was only a single caravan there (it was only 1pm) but little shade.  It’d be fine.  We exited, past the kiosk selling pies but not to me (such willpower), and drove 500mtr down the road. 

Beatrice Hill filled up ridiculously.  No toilets, not flat, little shade, yet vans of all description squeezed in next to us and around us and between each other.  They were mostly hire vans and Shana and I surmised that it was the first free camping spot from Darwin.  Even so, we’d have liked it if the young French couple who pulled up next to us had a friendlier demeanour and a more generous sense of personal space.

 

  I give Beatrice Hill 1 star out of 5.  It didn’t cost any money and, beyond that, had little going for it.

 

And so endeth our trip to ‘the du’.  It’s definitely not a case of Kakadon’t, a warning we’d heard from several grey nomads we’d met.  In my opinion Kakadu offers beautiful sites, but those sites are not as easily accessible as similar sites at Lichfield.  If you have little time and want to attain the biggest thrill per minute ratio then Lichfield’s definitely the place.  Kakadu, however, offers a breadth of different landscapes, cultures and experiences.  If you have the time, and spare cash to spend, then Kakadu has within it the possibility to alter your way of thinking.