1998
Lionel the Landcruiser
and Tap-Tap go Walkabout

Day 13
Kakadu

Hi again everyone. Yesterday I forgot to tell you which day it was because sometimes it gets hard to remember ourselves, but today is Friday 10 July which is day 13 since we left Perth. We have driven over 5000 km, but still only been in one state and one territory; we have been through deserts and over mountain ranges (well, hills anyway - we haven't been over 1000 m yet) and today we drove though crocodile infested flood plains and rivers.

A screwed-up palm... at Ubirr.

Yes, today I finally let these amateur drivers take me through a river - one that is well known to contain crocs at that. I must be mad, but then again they are getting to be reasonable offroaders now and I had to let them have a go sometime. I know there was that stream down south in WA a few weeks ago, but that was barely 5 cm deep over concrete, this was the real thing - about 0.7 m!

So, where did this momentous occasion take place? Well, for once we pretty much stuck to the plans for today and got up early to drive down to Jim Jim falls. Don't ask me where Jim Jim creek gets its name, no-one seems to know that here, but it is quite a large river for most of its length and winds through the park until it meets South Alligator river and flows into the sea. Because of this, and because there is water all the way up for nearly all the year, there is no way the ranger can be sure there are no estuarine crocodiles in there and swimming is actively discouraged with very large signs about the risk to life if you enter the water! The freshwater crocs which are all over the place are not supposed to be as dangerous as they only get to about 3 m and won't attack people, but personally I'm not sure I would want to go near any croc - maybe the salties are clever enough to disguise themselves as freshwaters to get a good feed of tourist!

Shopping trolleys in the water!!!

Anyway, I digress, we got some diesel (and a couple of choc milks) at Jabiru on the way down and took off down a pretty rough gravel track by about 8.30. The last 10 k was real 4WD through a mix of soft sandy patches, rocky bits, washed out creek beds and a couple of small streams. This gets you to the camp site at the river crossing where we stopped and watched as a couple of posh new 'Cruisers splashed their way across and Hild and Rob ummed and ahead about whether to go for it. I mean to say, as if I would have trouble where those overgrown shopping trolleys had made it through.

Twin Falls: The view we never saw.

Well, what finally decided things was an English couple in a long Lionel (a long wheel base version of me - a year or two younger, but not in as good condition) who were taking photo's. They said they had just been through and had no problems and I think that got Rob's ego going so off we went. Well, we all know how Rob drives don't we - pretty safe, but also pretty slow and boring - and he took the river as per usual. Low range, second gear, gentle entry - but so slow I thought we would still be there at the next rainy season and get washed away. Hild gave him the hurry up (clever girl) and got across like champions. And very refreshing it was too. I am now the first one of our party to have got his 'feet' wet in anything other than the shower - now they have got something to follow.

And this was the reason why we didn't see Twin Falls.

On the other side was a another 10 k of interesting track to the car park at twin falls. This is supposed to be a lovely pool, but only accessible by swimming or padding around a bend in the river. Having not intended to actually cross the river, neither of the two dry-foots were really ready for this, the air bed is still a bit iffy (it is actually a new design, self-deflating air-bed - feels fine when you go to sleep but by the morning you are on the ground!) and they were not all that keen on a 600 m swim each way. So they made do with a walk as far as you can get on dry land and some nice photos. It is an interesting sight around these river pools - it looks quite tropical at times, with lots of ferns and things and then when you look around at the rest of the land, which is pretty brown even though there is grass and trees, you get an oasis kind of feeling.

Hild - creating waves...

So, having wimped out on the swim (the sign did say that the rangers looked hard each year to make sure no salt-water crocs got into the pool), we had an early lunch and drove back. This time it was Hild's turn to cross the river and having remembered Rob's rather woozy attempt decided to go for the 'river, what river' approach and took it at a run! After the initial splash (which did rather take my breath away I have to admit) this was fine as we kept going nicely and had a nice bow wave to keep the water out of any vital bits. The only problem with that was for the group of not very bright people who were sitting on the opposite bank taking pictures (I think that's what they were doing anyway, I rather had my mind on other things at the time). They obviously hadn't seen any other vehicles go through or they would have realised that the bow wave ends up washing over the bank - just where they were sitting - so they got rather a shock. That'll teach 'em.

So, there you have it, this is now an official adventure as we have now crossed crocodile infested waters not once but twice! The fact that it was a prepared crossing with large cobble stones (well, that's what they looked and felt like to me and I was the one driving on them) and depth markers to show you how deep the middle was doesn't take away from the danger - if we had got stuck there someone would have had to have got out and waded up the bank to get us a tow. In croc country, that is not really something you want to do a lot of.

View across a billabong to Jim Jim Falls (... it's OK we couldn't see any water falling either..).

After that - to warm down sort of, we stopped for a short walk up to the Jim Jim falls plunge pool. We have sort of worked out now that by 'plunge pool' they are not referring to a bath you jump in after a sauna, but the pool at the bottom of a water fall which the water 'plunges' into. I t makes sense to us anyway. This was rated as a 900 m medium walk - yeah right - try 1900 m of 2 hand walk (where you need not just one but two hands to get up and down some bits) over rocks and boulders in the stream bed! You know these Aussies just can't seem to get it right, either walks are hopelessly over estimated (like a 1.5 km loop taking 2 hours) or under-rated like this one. There was a group of middle aged people coming out as we were going in who were having a really hard time of it and - quite frankly - probably shouldn't have been attempting it.. If it had been described better I think they would not have been doing it. As it was, we wished we had taken water and perhaps even our swimming gear because the pool at the end looked really very inviting and by this time we were rather hot and sweaty. But without water, staying there in the heat of the day was not a good move so we came straight back out - over taking the middle aged couples again on the way.

After that we decided to make straight for our next camp ground, Gunlom which is also referred to as waterfall creek. We did detour a bit to check out Saturday night's campsite at Yellow Water (where some cold drinks and licorice were purchased and consumed secretly while I was in the car park, but I could tell by their guilty expression and black teeth) which looks quite nice and a bit more developed than some of the more rustic bush camps we are used to staying at. The plan we had come up with was to cook dinner before it began to get dark to avoid needing the light which attracted such a lot of bugs yesterday. By eating in the light we could also then have a walk after dinner and wash up before coming to bed (instead of leaving the dirty pans to dry really hard overnight). This was a good plan except that this camp site appears to have almost no insects! Unbelievable. A few flies - which are becoming rather more of pets than pests now compared to the other bugs - hardly a mozzie to speak of and now s I am writing this barely a moth. We should come here more often.

	Sunset at Gunlom - the nicest surprise of the trip.

As we were just finishing dinner the Ranger dropped in for his money - this is a serviced camp site with proper toilets, showers and big sinks that people can even wash clothes in - which at $5 per person per night is a bit of a steal if you ask me. He recommended to us the walk to the top of the waterfall here - particularly if we could do it soon as the sunset was really nice from there, so we hurried up and shot off up the hill. This was a bit of a mistake as the hill was rather steep and there was actually plenty of time before the sun set. Still, it was good exercise after dinner and we got the chance to look at the pools at the top as well.

And just there, there was a spur of the moment decision to spend tomorrow just lazing up there at the pools rather than rushing around finding more bits to look at. We will still go to Yellow Water for tomorrow night, but rather than try to find lots of different places to look at on the way, we think we'll just have a bit of a lie-in, break camp rather more leisurely than usual and take our lunch and our books (together with lots of water of course) and have a few hours serious laziness. Shocking I know, having come all this way not to look at every single bit of Kakadu, but well, these humans seem to get a bit cultured and sceneried out every now and then so I reckon I can allow them this bit of time off. Be a bit of a break for me as well of course, but I shall be required again to take them back up to Cooinda (Yellow Water) tomorrow afternoon.

In which case I had better get my beauty sleep as well! So, until next time, bye for now.

Lionel