Elad’s blog

Adelade river stretches about 190 k”m. It hosts some 6000 crocodiles. A quick calculation shows that there is an average croc density of one to every 50 meters or so. In other words, you can’t miss them.

This is exactly the idea behind the “jumping crocodile” tour me and Tony took the day before yesterday, just before entering Kakadu. We took the cheapest tour, which was probably the best: instead of being confined to a closed aircon’ed ship where we can watch the reptiles only from the second floor, we got to a real proximity with the beasts, and could watch closely as the guide got them to eat the meat pieces he hanged on a hook for them. Later on we’ve also seen some hawks and birds doing the same tricks, and it was realy good - wait for the movies!

I mentioned only Tony, because Elinor didn’t join us in the end: at 3a.m. she phoned her familiy, and after their advice decided to cut her journey and go back home (just because she was dumped by Shani). So right now I am traveling only with Tony, a 26-years englishman from Manchester, and a really nice guy.

We went together to Kakadu, which he’s already seen but I skipped, and than to Katherine gorge, which I’ve already seen but he skipped. I will now describe them briefly.

The main attraction in Kakadu, for me, was the Aboriginal rock painting. A really superb piece of rock art, they painted lots of their food (different types of fish, etc.), some spiritual beings (most notably, the “lightening man” and his family), and some tribal stories (most beautiful, the “tribal dance”). There where two major sites -Ubirr, which we attended on the first day, has less impressive paintings but really good view of the sunset over the wetlands; and the second one, with a complicated name, has the really good rock art. Of course it is very abstract and figurative, but some paintings combine two colors (overall there are only four colors: black, red, yellow, and white) and could easily fit into a figurative modern art work - let’s say, Juan Miro or some other spanish style artist. Most interesting were the missing things - I couldn’t locate paintings of crocodiles, or other beasts. I wonder why - they painted only what they eat, and not what eats them.

Besides this, we went to a nice pool; we skipped the river cruise which is supposed to be one of the highlights because we already had a cruise on the Adelade river, and we figured out it would be just the same. We did go to some bird-watching over the wetlands, spotted some Wallabies and other interesting animals at a small bushwalk, and enjoyed the views and the scenery - not breathtaking, but very nice.

Today we went to Edith Falls. Like the french say, C’est la tone qui fait la musique. I enjoyed it much more than in the previous round; just a matter of good company. We did swimming in all the pools, including the upper one, which I skipped when with the girls. It took some walking to get there - a very nice piece of hike. The place is very recommended, especially if you’re with good company.

Now we’re back in Katherine. Tomorrow we’ll see the gorge, and than head south - we’re now less than 1300 k”ms from Alice-Springs, so I expect to get there in less than a week.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 11th, 2005 at 11:26 and is filed under Travels, Australia Center and South. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.