Kakadu: Bowali Visitor Centre

We spent our time in Kakadu near Cooinda and only stopped in Jabiru as we left the park.  We stopped at the Bowali Visitor Centre our last morning in Kakadu.

Thankfully this visitor centre allows photography, so I did manage to get a few pictures.  We had debated not stopping here so we could get going to Darwin but I’m so glad we stopped in for just a quick visit.  This visitor centre was more about the land, the regions, the wildlife, while the one in Cooinda was about the aboriginal culture.  The two are very different from each other.

Kakadu is a world heritage site, one of only 25 listed for both its environment and its cultural values.  It’s the largest national park in Australia.  It’s one-third the size of Tasmania.  It’s huge!  There are many different regions to the park and we really only visited a couple of them during our stay.  To get a better feel for Kakadu you need to spend more than a few nights here to take it all in. A 4WD is optimal to be able to see all the different regions, and be prepared to do some cruises or tours too.  It would be so neat to see this place during different seasons.  The wet season transforms Kakadu completely.

In the visitor centre there was information on local wildlife with some great displays.  The kids all exclaimed over these flying foxes.  When I was a kid I remember being afraid of bats though any I remember seeing were tiny compared to these!

They also loved the giant snake.  Of course.  What kid wouldn’t love a giant snake?  :)  We followed a school group in and I was hoping we’d get to listen to the ranger talking with them but they ran through here pretty quick and then disappeared.

Cane toads were introduced to Australia at one point in the hopes they’d reduce the cane beetle population.  Instead they’ve turned out to be a terror to local wildlife (anything that eats a cane toad will die from the ingested poison) and they are about impossible to get rid of.  The kids are always on the lookout for one, we’ve seen some large toads, not quite as big as this one, but I have no idea if they were actually cane toads or not.

We’ve seen many of these termite nests in the leaves as we’ve travelled around Australia, but this caught our eye because of the picture of the ants holding the leaves together.  We’d read they do this, but it was neat to see such a good picture of it (on the top right).  Some of the ants stretch their bodies and hold the leaves together while the others transfer larvae and glue the nest together.  We were lucky to see this in action not long after this, but I don’t remember where, I took a picture of it so hopefully I’ll come across it later.

I didn’t know until we got to Kakadu and I saw pictures of the town of Jabiru that it is also the name of a bird, it’s on the signs going into town.  I’ve been hoping to see a Jabiru, they are rather large and elegant looking.  (I didn’t know it then but we would see one up close and personal once we got to WA.)

Off in one corner was this kids fishing activity, this kept the kids occupied for some time.  They all had turns and helped TurboBug catch some things too.

Any visitor centre that has a truck to climb into is going to be a hit with the kids.  :)

This was an example of a cheeky yam, it’s huge!  We’d heard about these I think at the rock art talk we went to.  If the juice runs clear it’s safe to eat, if it has white specks in it then it’s too cheeky (poisonous) to eat!  The yam is the root of a foul-smelling flower, how somebody ever decided to dig one up and eat the root would be an interesting story.

There’s a large uranium mine in Kakadu (not part of the national park but surrounded by it) and it was interesting to learn that aboriginals have long labelled the land ‘sickness country’.  These areas contain high levels of uranium.  We were interested in visiting the mine but were told there wasn’t much out there to see and it would have been a long drive.  About ten days later there was a bush fire in Kakadu and I heard on the radio of some controversy with the operators of the mine, some felt their mismanagement of the land was to blame.  I imagine there is lots of ongoing controversy having a uranium mine in the middle of a world heritage site!

This room was closed off for maintenance but doesn’t it look lovely?  We didn’t get the chance to see any water or marine life while at Kakadu.

This crocodile skeleton is begging to be climbed on and played with, I wasn’t sure if that was allowed and had quite the time convincing a 2yo to leave it be.  I was afraid he’d make off with some of those bones!  Look at that head, it’s huge!  There are more than 10,000 crocs in Kakadu, can you imagine meeting one of these?

I had to tear TurboBug (2) away from the air-conditioned library with the kid-sized table and chairs.  Before we left we ducked into the theatre where they were showing the ABC documentary Kakadu: Where Man Meets Wild and Nature Calls the Shots.  How lovely it would have been to watch the whole series.  We sat enraptured and watched an aboriginal woman shooting magpie geese out of the sky, JitterBug (8) mentions bush tucker all the time after seeing that! The lovely painting in the picture below was near the toilets.

We see these lovely whirly-winds quite regularly on our drives.  This one was after we left Kakadu that day.  Sometimes we’ll see leaves swirling on the road in front of us and suddenly realise we are about to drive right into one of these!  We can really feel it when we are towing but there’s no way to avoid them.

I have more pictures of Kakadu from some other walks we did but they are on another computer at the moment, I’ll have to post them later.  We spent three or four nights there and then we were on our way to Darwin.  I was really looking forward to Darwin, to being in a ‘big’ city again and having a good rest after all the driving we’ve done since leaving the east coast.

Kakadu: Mardugal Billabong Walk

Our next stop after Katherine was Kakadu National Park.  The Warradjan Aboriginal Cultural Centre in Kakadu was fantastic.  Unfortunately no photography is allowed so I can’t show you any of the fabulous displays.  It was one of those places where there were so many interesting things to look at that the kids took off in all directions as soon as we got through the door.  I kept having to wrangle them back together to point things out to them.  Heaps of info on aboriginal culture and wildlife in the area.  This seasonal calendar just outside the main door is the only picture I have.  There are six seasons on the aboriginal calendar and this gave just a clue as to what happens during each. (I have no idea why LadyBug (5) brought along her Rubik’s cube that day!)

We camped at the caravan park in Cooinda which is in the Yellow Water region of Kakadu.  One of the short walks in the area was the Mardugal Billabong Walk, which we thought was supposed to be a walk along the water’s edge.  It was more a trail that went parallel to the water but some way from it, but you couldn’t even see the water until the end.  And it was hot.  Very hot.  Definitely croc country here.

The walk itself was rather unexciting but at only half a kilometre it was a short one.   This spiral palm was along the trail, they are so interesting but I’ve read they aren’t even palms.  Somewhere I have a picture of one all green and lush.

At the end of the walk there is a picnic table, we had a snack and enjoyed the view of the river.  We were high enough up that we didn’t have to worry about crocs as long as we didn’t fall in.  :)

These two were ‘fishing’ together.  It was cute, they made up all sorts of stories while they sat there together.  In the second picture below they’ve moved up a bit, we asked them to move back since we didn’t want anyone faliing in!

Someone at the campground gave TurboBug a new hat that didn’t fit their child anymore.  He was so happy with it.  The only problem is that the hat is white and the dirt is red.  That hat won’t be white for long!

We enjoyed the view for a little while then made our way back to the campground to enjoy the pool at the lodge.  We’ve discovered the best way to survive this heat up north is to swim often.  There are waterholes safe for swimming at Kakadu but most are accessible only with 4WD.  The campground definitely had a national park feel, nice after some of the caravan parks we’ve been in.  It’s a huge campground with over 300 sites, full to the brim during peak season but not too crowded while we were there.

Katherine Hot Springs

You really shouldn’t come to Katherine without a visit to the hot springs.  Don’t miss it.  The water is beautiful and clear.  I’ve heard it can be incredibly crowded but one of the advantages of being here at the end of the season is that there aren’t as many tourists.  We swam in the hot springs on three different occasions, two on our first visit to Katherine as we were going north to Darwin and once on our way back through before heading west.

There’s a set of stairs leading down to the springs and the kids were quite put off by the crocodile warning sign at the top.  Once you get down there you realise a crocodile would have no chance of hiding in this clear water.  During the wet season I’m sure it’s a different story, we’re told the area floods and the river with its resident crocodiles is just over the hill.

There are different areas to explore, this waterfall was a favourite.  We all had turns going over it, even TurboBug (2) on a boogie board.  This was the only section with deep water.  Most places I could touch the bottom except right near the waterfall.

 

There was enough movement in the springs that you could let the current carry you.

I walked up to the top of the trail to see where the springs come out.  There’s no access for swimming up here but I’m sure that doesn’t stop everyone.

Look how fast the springs move!

It’s just such a beautiful spot.

The water is so clear, especially the places where there are no people around to stir up the rocks and mud on the bottom.  LadyBug (5) especially had fun collecting rocks off the bottom.  She’d bring them up and give them to TurboBug (2) who would carefully place them on her boogie board.

Some jumping had to happen, there was that one deep pool and a wall perfect for jumping from.  On our next trip they jumped off the other side landing in the deepest section near the waterfall.

We were told that this place can be very, very crowded at times.  We were lucky to not have huge crowds while we were there. 

See JitterBug (8) at the top of this picture, under the water?  He spent so much time in that area.  He was playing some sort of game where he’d attack the roots under the water and then catch whatever came out (mostly loosened plant material), I think he was pretending he was a crocodile.  There were a few fish in here but not many.

On our last visit we had our snorkels.  See all the bubbles from the waterfall?  It was magical swimming through there with a mask on.  The bubbles felt so amazing and tingly.

We stayed at the Boab Caravan Park.  It’s a small park that only allows caravans and camper trailers, no tents.  It was very clean and had an open grassy area for the kids to run around in.  All the sites had concrete slabs, which is nice after camping in dirt.  There is a boab tree there as you’d guess from the name, but it’s surrounded by concrete and buildings, poor tree.  There are some boabs in the NT though they become more common as you move west.

Insert random toddler picture (taken in Katherine).  Every once in a while I get a good smile out of this guy!

One of the memorable parts of our stay in Katherine was watching the bats soar overhead every night at dusk.  We are not strangers to bats leaving for their nightly feed but I’m pretty sure this was more than I’d ever seen at once.  So many of them flying overhead, it was such a sight to see!