Kakadu National Park

10th - 12th of September 2006

After a couple of relaxing days in Darwin, it was time for my Kakadu 4WD tour!

First thing we did after a bit of gravel road racing was jump on a boat for a cruise on the billabongs of Mary River Wetlands, where we saw crocs, both salties and freshies. Other than the crocs, the billabong had an amazing concentration of wildlife, mainly birds. After lunch we headed towards Nanguluwur art site to have a look at some really cool aboriginal rock art. My favorite was this one, a rock painting with a whitefella drawn with his hands in his pockets. Then we climbed Ubirr, a big cliff sorta thing with an awesome 360 degree view! Since we had the view of five different types of habitats, the scenery changed completely from one side to the other. After collecting firewood, we set up our swags and got a fire going at the Jim Jim Falls campground.

Next morning we went for a bumpy 4WD tour across a river to Twin Falls. We went for a bit of a climb, which was a bit of a challenge for me, since I was wearing flip-flops (my shoes are still in Adventure Tours' lost property box somewhere). Eventually we made it to the top and had quite a good view. We stayed at the top of Twin Falls and went for a short walk to a nice little swimming spot. After yet another walk, this time down the hill, we jumped on a boat for a short river cruise to the bottom of the 70 metres high Twin Falls. After a couple of group photos, we headed back and drove to the bottom of Jim Jim Falls, the highest straight-drop waterfall in Australia (about 200 metres). As you can see on the picture, there isn't much of a waterfall to see as it dries out in the dry season :O) It was still worth going though, because there was a huge pool at the bottom. On top of that, Andy (our guide) had promised to show me a couple of cool spots for cliff jumping! Climbing the rock to the point you jumped from was a bit scary, but the jump was definitely worth it! JJ, a German guy from our group, took a photo of me when I jumped, but I'm waiting for him to e-mail it. We also had a visitor when we were sitting on the rocks enjoying the sun - a little tree snake.

Next day we went to Barramundi Gorge, the coolest swim spot I have ever seen! It had a little pool where you could dive in and swim though a hole to pool next to it and even better: More cliff jumps!! The one I'm doing on the picture is about eight metres, it had a five meter jump as well... and as Andy showed us... a ~20 metre! Maniac :O) Take a look in the gallery for videos. We spent a couple of hours at Barramundi Gorge, having a wicked time! Just before we headed back to Darwin, we stopped to take a look at a massive termite mound, about 70-80 years old.

Sadly, good times came to an end, and we had to make our way back to Darwin. I had a brilliant time in Kakadu, our group was great and Andy turned out to be quite a cool guide in spite of the fact that he sounded like the donkey from Winnie the Pooh when he introduced himself the first morning :O) Kakadu is definitely on my Australia top ten!