Kakadu

We arrived in Kakadu in the evening and we went to watch another beautiful sunset at Yellow Waters. A local there warned us not to sit on the jetty with our legs dangling as there are 5 metre saltwater crocodiles in the area and our legs would just be a little snack to them!

We had planned on doing a walk all around Yellow Waters as the place is supposed to be teeming with birds and other wildlife, but because its so soon after the rainy season, the boardwalk is still under 3 metres of water - guess that rules the walk out so... They had a late wet season this year in the Northern Territory with the rains only stopping about 4 weeks ago so quite a lot of the place is still recovering from the floods. They've also started the bush burn off so we're constantly driving past bush fires. Some of them are only tiny patches of land, maybe 3m x 3m but other fires are really quite huge and the smoke and heat as you drive by is tremendous. It's really cool to see though!

After a lazy morning we headed on to Nourlangie Rock where we saw some great examples of well preserved Aboriginal Rock Art. The art was a lot more interesting that we thought it would be and the view from the lookout on the escarpment over the floodplains was fantastic.

After a stop off at Annbangbang Billabong we drove on to Coroboree, stopping for a while when we saw some joeys playing on the grass outside a roadhouse.

We stayed in a roadhouse campsite that night which we later renamed the valley of the damned because the bugs, mozzies and other assorted beasties were just totally out of control there (from the recent floods apparently). Practically every surface in the van was covered with some weird crawley and there were beetles that were (no exaggeration) the size of the palm of your hand and about an inch high - needless to say Elaine was freaking out and to be fair I wasn't too happy myself. There was nothing else for it, we abandoned ship and headed to the roadhouse bar (trying not to stand on all the cane toads along the way) and that was an experience in itself.

The bar was Hicksville, Tenessee and the mullet was the 'doo' du jour. It was the locals pool night so all the local weirdos were out, complete with ticks, twitches, ripped clothes and cowboy hats. We were the only people there wearing shoes which was particularly disturbing especially when one of the local women stood on one of the giant scorpion beetles - I thought Elaine was going to have a heart attack! Despite first impressions, the people were great craic, really friendly salt of the earth type people and we ended up staggering back to our tent at 1am, not in any state to be worrying about giant bugs...

Next up - jumping crocodiles!