Darwin 3: off to the National PARKS Litchfield and Kakadu

This is part of the Top End (just have a look at Litchfield, Kakadu and later Nitmiluk further south)

Prologue

You have to get to the parks somehow.

• Try to hitch a ride? Doesn’t work. The trip is way too complex if you want to see the highlights
• Get together with other travelers on a Facebook page for Darwin/Australia Backpackers? Only if you have a lot of time to wait for an opportunity to come up
• Get together with backpackers from your hostel? Then from one evening to the next morning one of the women meets Prince Charming, the other one gets offered a lucrative job like “prawn fishing” (working in deep sea fishing makes work-and-travel tourists eligible for the renewal of their visa for a second year)
• Renting a four-wheel-drive on your own is far too expensive!
• Nothing really works? Then book a tour!

Sounds easy! Your internet connection is feeble? No problem! Go downtown, almost half of all the businesses are travel agencies. In one of them I bought myself a nice package tour to Litchfield and Kakadu, three days, two nights, accommodation, meals (even special meals like gluten-free), guided tours, explanations about nature, rock art, aborigines, everything included, perfect! Once you’ve done your booking, you don’t have to worry about anything. My ATM card stopped working right there, while I was booking. No problem, my pre-payed card seemed to do the job.

A Dream of a vehicle

Then the young travel agent gave a start:

“Oh my God, I made a mistake!!!!!! Here it says: for participants up to around forty years of age only.”

A r e  y o u  k i d d i n g … talking to me …. or who … too bad young man … too late

– my consciousness was streaming –

hell keep cool just a couple of years no fretting over age calm down what the … me of all people how did he know … I should have never … bloody hell … all my money … cheating me or what

Take it easy, I was slowly coming round again and said:

“Just call the tour operator and tell them, I’m fine.”

(Je …! is that so difficult?)

The poor chap did as I had asked him to and after a long talk of which I only overheard

“she seems okay she looks okay”

{¿ṅ$&@%¤§±#€!!!!!}, he kindly recommended that I should try my best to keep up with the young ones on the tour. I very much appreciated this helpful piece of advice and left  {¿ṅ$&@%¤§±#€!!!!!}.

Australians seem to have a thing about age …

Next morning – I hadn’t even finished my tea yet – the hostel manager told me with his broadest friendliest Chinese smile to call the travel agency as quickly as possible. Something was wrong with my credit card, my payment hadn’t gone through and I might not be able to go on the trip.

Ho-ly sht – I rushed downtown under the scorching sun my thoughts running wild

(me, interiorly monologuing):

• ha, they’re trying to dump the old lady,
• bggr, I will never see the outback, never see any kangaroos, dingoes,
• never admire pieces of ancient rock art
• never swim in ice-cold plunge pools, never sit under freezing waterfalls,
• never take pictures of crocs basking in the sun (after having swallowed a travel agent) and cockatoos looking down on humans from picturesque treetops,
• never ever have a real Dundee adventure,
• never see a sunset over the wetlands!

a 2-km-walk making me feel ever more hopeless with each step

A delicate, pale, blonde young lady with a slight accent of guesswhere greeted me when I entered the travel agency. She told me she had insisted with the tour operator that I got another chance, that my card probably hadn’t worked because her colleague had made a mistake entering the numbers. Then, confidently, she put herself to the task and made everything work, the payment went through and bingo … I was on … I stayed around to chat a bit and found out that she was from Hamburg. The charming young man from the day before appeared and told me he had almost had a heart-attack when he realized that the payment had gone wrong.

You’re telling me, chap!

THE TRIP

The next morning I tried to be ready a bit ahead of time and really, at 5.55 a.(!) m. the tour guide was there to pick me up. Off we went into the direction of Litchfield Park. From now on my life and that of everybody else in the group was timed to the minute.

This is Georgia:

our guide, a former outdoor education teacher from Melbourne, knowledgeable, conscientious,  hard working, reliable, assertive …

• Fastest driver on highways and on dirt roads

at this speed we almost ran over a wallaby (poor little thing)

• Keen explainer of natural and anthropological phenomena: here talking about Magnetic Termites: tiny, innocuous creatures (not house-eaters), extraordinary architects  aligning their mounds in perfect North – South direction, probably orienting themselves on the magnetic fields of the earth.                                              It never gets too hot on any side of the mounds, also, the termites move to the more temperate side during the day (and I keep thinking of Dubai and Abu Dhabi architects). With its tunnels, chambers and chimneys made from the yucky recipe of mud, vegetation, termite saliva and excrement each mound is waterproof and air-conditioned and resists as long as the Queen is alive, with a bit of luck up to 40 years. Sometimes these towers get attacked by envious ants determined to kick the termites out and move into their fabulous building. At that point the clever little termite-buggers resort to an efficient strategy to defend their fancy home: they spray a liquid with their own smell onto the intruding ants in order to confuse them and make them turn against each other. (ha-haha-Haaa-ha)

tiny black ant in the middle, scout or survivor?

Me among the termite mounds, see how big …

On the left side between the two flat mounds there is a Cathedral type mound. Cathedral termites stay cool because they have hollow columns inside their mounds which provide air – circulation from the cool ground. This keeps the interior from overheating.

The Cathedral mounds in that area were not as big as in other places but this one is a nice example

Next stop: Wangi Falls

Swimming in the plunge pool or walking through the wilderness? No worries about crocs because they are there mainly during the rainy season and July is dry. With freshies – the shy and slender freshwater crocodiles – you have a fair chance of getting away unharmed or with miner injuries. Salties – the tough and big-toothed saltwater crocodiles, are predators, killers, man eaters and they can sneak far inland during the rainy season and wreak havoc on the unsuspecting swimmer.

See the difference? On the left Fred, the freshy, 1,60 m, needle shaped teeth, lives in  fresh or slightly salty water only. On the right Brutus, the salty, 4 m, Saltwater or Estuarine Crocodile, biggest reptile in the world, he survives in fresh water, too (wow, that would be a real adventure to come across one that’s not behind a fence).

Fred and Brutus, each behind his own fence. I was worried not to come across any crocs, so I took these pictures at a roadside stop.

While the group chose to take it easy (!) and go swimming (!), I decided to give proof of being as fit as a thirty-nine-year-old and went on the Wangi Loop Walk, all around the plunge pool and the falls …

… enjoying the most fantastic views: the monsoon forest with its wines, ferns and fungi, flying foxes hanging from tree tops, Wangi Creek winding towards the fall …

Spiderweb of the Golden Orb

Mr and Mrs Golden Orb weren’t in at the time. The wife is biiiig, the husband tiny, sometimes getting eaten in the heat of the moment or rather afterwards (..it happens).

Wangi Falls in “winter” (dry season)

Hundreds of big bats called Flying Foxes

“Can anybody tell me how they manage to poop on you while hanging head down from the trees?”

Lone walk, silence, nobody, just to give you an idea

I felt great, but, to tell the truth, it hadn’t been such a tough walk, after all, and I kept asking myself what this fussing about age was all about.

 Florence Falls

That’s where I went for a plunge. The water was clear and refreshing …

Florence Falls, safe for swimming in the dry season

… and full of black fish that occasionally nibble at you just to see if you are good.

Back to the bus over picturesque Shady Creek Walk

To end the day another two points about Georgia:

• Best cook (healthy, quick, delicious meals prepared in the campsite kitchen tent)
  

  
• Firm educator with clear rules: drink water, be punctual (always!), drink water, help with the dishes, drink three litres of water, otherwise no beer (I didn’t care for the beer but the three-litre-rule is right in the tropics), heed the signs and stay five metres away from rivers and creeks and drink water again.

I had a tent all to myself.

Good night and see you in Kakadu National Park

coming up sooooooooon

Gerburg