Kakadu National Park, NT, Australia
After an eventful night in Darwin, we left town for a 300 km drive to Kakadu National Park for a couple of days of eco tourism at it’s finest – Not enough time! We stopped at a few places on the way, taking in some scenes of the Northern Territory. The parks around here are managed by the traditional owners (aboriginies), and they have some wonderful visitor centers (all free!). The wetlands are incredible, with an aboundance of birdlife.
We arrived at the Gagadu Lodge in time for sunset, and signed up for their famous Yellow Water Cruise for the following morning. The cruise is a definate must-do in the park. From the highway, you just see the dry looking eucalyptus forests, filled with impressive termite mounds. From the river, we saw the surrounding wetland, filled with thousands of birds and water lilies, crocodiles around every bend, and fields of grass covered floodplains that are covered with meters of water during the wet season. The biggest croodile we saw was a 4.5 m male named Pluto (named after an unfortunate german shepperd). Most of the others were just “little” females.
In the afternoon, we hiked around some ancient aboriginal paintings. It’s interesting that many generations of art co-exist on one rock face. It’s not ok to touch up someone else’s work, but ok to paint something new over it, so the paintings we saw were made of many generations of art and story-telling.
That night we got to visit with the owner at the local pub & bistro, who moved to Kakadu a while back from Perth. He gave us a better insight into why we’ve seen no Aboriginies in the parks and services (except for some mixed breeds), despite the fact that this is their land. He explained that these aboriginies just don’t need to work. They receive lease payments from the Government. Some spend a lot of it on SUV’s, some spend it all on booze at his bar. That part’s a big problem here. They don’t need much of the money for other necessities, because they live off the land. That’s kind of how he explained it, anyway.
I was especially sad to see what the alcohol has done to the spirits of so many of them. The elders are very upset about it too, so hopefully they’ll find a solution. Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s an obvious one.
