Kakadu

They did it!  We finally had some fish for dinner… not the longed for Barramundi, but a couple of Saratoga.  According to Ben’s fishing bible Saratoga has a very poor eating quality, very poor maybe for those who catch a lot of fish, but for those of us who are fish starved there was nothing sweeter!

The boat has definitely been a worth while purchase, we have used it a lot, not just for fishing, but for getting to see parts of  Kakadu that are inaccessible without a croc-proof boat.

 

 

And of course we have been able to see some wildlife which we may not have had a chance to see otherwise.

Our time in Kakadu had not even started and we were enjoying the beautiful scenery of the tropical north wetlands.  We started out in Mary River National Park, taking Hardies 4WD track into Couzins Lookout camp.  This is the first bit of rough 4WDing we’d done for a while and it was good to get off the beaten track again. We were definitely rewarded with some great sights on the early part of the journey with billabongs, water lilies and birdlife everywhere (although the kids saw little with their eyes glued to a movie screen!). The track did dry out after a while though and the going got pretty dusty towards the end.

 

 

 

The mosquitos were out in full force at Couzins Lookout and we were confined to the mozzie net during the dusk and dawn hours.  We had been warned about the mosquito problem, and were not looking forward to dealing with a week or more of the little blighters after this first night, but really, so long as you wore long sleeves and used repellent and a net they were not that much of a problem.  It was only later in the afternoon and first thing in the morning for most of the time anyway.  Certainly not bad enough to consider not coming to Kakadu as we have heard is the case with some people.

From Couzins we camped at Shady Camp for a couple of nights. Shady Camp is on the Mary River with the camp right beside a barrage which helps to stem the flow of the salt water from the tidal part of the river into the fresh water area.  The man-made barrage has been built to replicate the natural barricades that Mother Nature once had in place, but which have now mostly eroded away due to water craft on the river.  The barrage allows you to fish either upstream in the fresh water or down stream in the salt water.  It’s amazing to see the change in tide heights too, they get 6 or 7 metre tide differences here, so when the tide is out you can barely see the the water on the sea side. Unfortunately the fish were not biting though – and not just for us, everyone was having a poor time of it.

So, four nights in and we eventually make it to Kakadu itself, staying at Two Mile Hole.  A great spot which we had all to ourselves on the night we were there and the spot where Ben and Tobey caught their Saratoga.

Enough of the fishing for now, it was time to move on and experience something different from Kakadu. We spent a couple of nights at Ubirr with the highlights definitely being the rock art and the amazing sunset view over the wetlands.  From Ubirr you can look across the East Alligator River into Arnhem Land. The causeway at Cahills Crossing is a great place to hang out and watch the sights for a while.  It’s a popular place to fish from the side of the banks, but there are plenty of crocodiles around here.  We were there at high tide one day and like the Mary River at Shady Camp the tidal flow is huge (even though we are about 80kms from the sea), we watched as two crocodiles ‘surfed’ up the river, over the causeway on the incoming tide.  It’s a sight I will long remember, jaws open and looking like they were waiting for anything to get near.

 

 

 

 

 

The Kakadu Rangers give a series of talks, slide shows and guided walks throughout the park which are just brilliant.  They provide so much more information than you could hope to take in off an information board and are ready to answer to any question you may have.  We went along to several of these and they helped our appreciation of this country and the way that the Aboriginal people have lived here for around 60,000 years.  It’s an extraordinarily long time and to gain a better understanding of what the country means to the Traditional Owners and how they care for and work with their country left both Ben and I in owe of their culture.  The laws and culture are passed on to the next generation through the stories of the people, nothing is written down and there are strict rules (or laws) about which stories can be told to which people.  This makes for a culture which can so easily be lost within the space of a generation or two if the stories are not retold. Kakadu is a very spiritual place and you cannot help but feel closer to the land here and look at the bush in a whole different way.  That is unless you are the English family whom we had the misfortune of sharing the sunset view from Ubirr rock with.  Imagine a teenage daughter videoing her father jumping around like an idiot – “oh look at Daddy, he’s an Aboriginal spirit and he’s coming to get me!”.  There really is no educating people like that, but surely there is something called respect!

 

 

 

 

 

There are so many fantastic sights in Kakadu, from the escarpments throughout the park to the waterfalls and down to the wet lands, I won’t bore you with the details of them all, but here are some photos of our highlights.

 

 

 

 

The scenery has been stunning, but the most memorable time we spent in Kakadu and perhaps the most memorable time we have spent on our trip so far has been on a tour called “Kakadu Animal Tracks Safari”. For seven hours we were taught how to gather and prepare bush tucker by an Aboriginal woman called Patsy and  the tour operator, Sean.  Although this tour was fairly expensive it was well worth every cent, we all got so much out of it, especially an appreciation of how time consuming it is to gather food from the bush, but also how most plants and animals in the bush have a use if you know how to use them.  The kids, especially Indianna, follows Patsy around like a lost puppy dog, they were all fascinated with what she was doing. The first stop on our journey was to watch Patsy and her sister Jennifer search for lily seed pods while Sean pushed the boat along.  Before they ventured onto the billabong there was a lot of studying the water and water’s edge though – the water was still pretty high in the billabong and a large crocodile lives near-by.  They made it back safely and we got to try the lily seeds, an amazing amount of seeds came out of each pod.  They also use these seeds to grind into a flour to make damper.

 

Next we poked around for fresh water mussels, using a metal stake to dig into the softer mud on the dried river banks, we really had little luck unless Patsy showed us where one was!

 

 

 

 

 

Then Patsy pulled some bark from a paperbark tree and made a basket to hold the mussels in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Water buffalo is obviously not a native animal to Australia, but was farmed in this area in the early 1900’s.  After the demand for buffalo reduced many of the farmed animals became feral, causing a lot of damage on the fragile wetlands in the northern region.  In the 1970’s the government started culling the feral water buffalo, but conceded that the aboriginal people now made buffalo an important part of their diet and allowed a buffalo farm to be established.  The safari is conducted mostly on this buffalo farm and all profits from the tour go towards the running of the farm and therefore the provision of buffalo meat to the local Aboriginals.  We managed to see just a small herd of buffalo, they are spread over a fairly large area, so not easy to track down…. and not the focus of our tour at any rate.

Another stop in the bush had us collecting palm leaves to make string with, some firewood and then Patsy happened to find a green ants nest that she expertly scooped the ants out of and crushed in her hands for us all to have a mouthful of.  We have learned previously that green ant bums have a citric taste and can be used to flavour water or food, (a favourite of Tobey’s) but to chew down a handful of crushed ants is another thing – very bitter and a powerful after-taste, but apparently a great vitamin for your general well-being!

The last collection for the day was to thump some water chestnuts from the dried mud!  These water chestnuts are only about as big as a finger nail and we searched for them using a hammer to break away the dried mud from the ground.  Not easy pickings… lets just say that I’m pleased this is not all we had to eat!

 

More paperbark to collect, this time for cooking and then we were on our way to our dinner site.

At the dinner site the first job was to get the Magpie Goose cooked, which meant plucking it, burning off the down, brushing off the down ash, cutting it up, laying it on the camp fire and then covering it with paperbark to create an oven.  It was all hands on deck!

Also on the fire was some buffalo and a couple of barramundi. Everything was so delicious, including the damper and billy tea to wash it all down with. Our collection of water mussels and chestnuts that we’d gathered through the day were all gobbled up too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While we waited for dinner to cook we watched the sun go down over a part of Yellow Water that is not otherwise accessible and learnt how to make string from our palm leaves.

 

 

 

 

 

We had such a brilliant day and the icing on the cake was we got to take away a couple of barramundi.  The only ones we were able to keep from Kakadu and not the eating variety that Ben had so wanted, but the painted variety, courtesy of Patsy!

As we move on from Kakadu the words of Bill Neidjie (a traditional owner) really stick in my head…

‘My people…

Not many.

We getting too old.

Young people…

I don’t know if they can hang onto this story.

But, now you know this story

You responsible now.

You got to go with us to Earth.

Might be you can hang onto this story

to this Earth.’