Our scenic flight this morning, in a little 8 seater with Air Kakadu, was a wonderful way to see the high Arnhem plateau, the dramatic rocky bluffs and ridges and the long Alligator rivers snaking through the broad flood plains to the sea.
The rivers were named by Phillip Parker King in 1822, he had just been exploring in the Everglades and mistook the many crocodiles for alligators.
Our flight included a great commentary – the high Arnhem plateau is aboriginal land where those with leprosy used to hide from the police to avoid the one way trip to the leper colony.
The low plain is Kakadu National park – the biggest in Australia – and was explored most notably by Leichhardt in 1845 who returned with a whole tribe of friendly natives, and then by McKinlay in 1866 – a complete fiasco: they started in the rainy season due to delays in funding and ended up eating and skinning their horses; making a raft with their hides & rafting out to the coast pursued by hungry salt water crocs attracted to the fresh meaty raft!
You can see the river change colour from the clear fresh water tumbling off Arnhem land, to murky green then muddy yellow as it meets the salt water from the sea. The crocs were clearly visible 
We also got a good view of the crocodile hotel down in Jabiru (!)
Fortunately for all of us David didn’t touch the controls! Our pilot Mike was excellent and has been a good guide – he told us about the swimming places earlier and told us to check out Cahill crossing later today – (see below)
We drove north to Ubirr, another art gallery and amazing look out
Some of these paintings are at least 5000 years old as they show animals now extinct – a stripy marsupial dog, Thylacine, which was pushed out with the arrival of the dingo. (Not shown here – too high up)
On one section of the main gallery was a long frieze of food: fish, turtles etc – it reminded me of the Roman frescos in dining rooms! Especially with the reddish colour.
You could see how the art got more sophisticated over time – the very oldest are hand prints and stick men, then you get the spirits of the Dreamtime – including the rainbow spirit – a female with a bad attitude – and later there are the ‘x-ray’ animals showing bones and internal organs and with more pattern.
There are hollows in the stones for mixing paints
And all over there are beautiful trees with white bark- like these three Graces:
We then visited Cahill crossing where the incoming tide forms a weir over the ford where the metalled road turns into the red dust road. I counted 16 crocs swimming against the tide with their strong tails waiting for the barramundi coming up-stream. It was like a film! This guy fishing was mad – people have been killed here & the signs say 5m from the water minimum.
Then we picked up food supplies etc in Jabiru and set off for the Coroboree Billabong & Mary River to find our houseboat. It is palatial and pink!
David on the helm:
We had upstairs and downstairs
We were also told about the million dollar fish: the government have released tagged barramundi into the waterways of the Northern Territory – a few tags are worth one million – others 10,000 or 5,000. See www.milliondollarfish.com.au It’s to encourage tourism and fishing … how do we know the crocs haven’t already got it??
We had a lovely evening eating our dinner listening to bird-song in the middle of pink lilies – another stunning sunset in crocodile infested waters 🙂
And I caught up with blog and diary writing!
