{"id":726,"date":"2018-10-25T09:14:00","date_gmt":"2018-10-25T08:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.holloway.me.uk\/?p=726"},"modified":"2018-10-25T10:10:31","modified_gmt":"2018-10-25T09:10:31","slug":"kakadu-nature-heritage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.holloway.me.uk\/index.php\/2018\/10\/25\/kakadu-nature-heritage\/","title":{"rendered":"Kakadu – nature & heritage"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"10\/22\/18\"<\/p>\n

Up early to make the most of the \u2018cooler\u2019 mornings and drove 1hr 45 mins south to Gunlam falls. Most things are a long way apart even though we are in the middle of the park! This is the biggest national park in Australia so we need to get used to Australian distances!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We climbed up a short hill (only 33 degrees) and, with nobody else to have to share with, we enjoyed the pools above the nearly dry waterfall. A great view and amazing rocks, some with black stripes.<\/p>\n

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The views were lovely<\/p>\n

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It is the end of the dry season here – hot and humid. Most waterfalls are a trickle or dried up altogether. The benefits though are no mosquitoes and hardly any people. But this is also why we aren\u2019t bothering with the 2 hr drive to Jim Jim falls as they are dry now.<\/p>\n

I saw a dollar bird and a black faced cuckoo shrike. And big termite mounds:<\/p>\n

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On our way back we also stopped at Maguk – we saw many warning signs about crocodiles but at this time of year they are mostly in the rivers.<\/p>\n

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Several people were swimming in a big beautiful natural pool at the base of a good waterfall. As they had very bright floating devices and weren\u2019t at all eaten, we went in too. As the temperature has now risen to 36 or so the water was delicious!<\/p>\n

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Also we could see the bottom & we had been told \u2018don\u2019t swim if you can\u2019t see the bottom\u2019!<\/p>\n

We saw fish swimming round us and enjoyed showering under the waterfall. We really didn\u2019t want to get out!<\/p>\n

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\"NT<\/p>\n

Back in the lovely cool car we set out to see aboriginal rock art. On the way we saw a blue-winged kookaburra – and another forest kingfisher- a very smart chap. Too far for photos! Here are some of the lovely trees here & new shoots – a sign of the first rains:<\/p>\n

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Our first visit involved walking across the Gobi desert (or so it seemed). With fly nets, lots of water & determination we walked through burned scrub and lovely white barked trees in 37 degrees & high humidity the 1.5 km to a rocky bluff. No one else was in sight.<\/p>\n

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It was worth it – the art is anywhere between 20000 and 1000 years old but represents continuous aboriginal culture.<\/p>\n

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The etiquette is that you can\u2019t touch up other people\u2019s paintings but you can do your own on top of them.Turtles and fish are popular<\/p>\n

And here\u2019s the coming of a very different time:<\/p>\n

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The paintings were first made by ancient spirits who showed people how to paint.<\/p>\n

The second site is Anbangbang (given a totally different name on the map!) – this has coach parks and much more money spent on access & therefore an easy 5 min walk from the car. These showed the creation spirits (quite a difficult lot)<\/p>\n

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And kangaroos<\/p>\n

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These paintings are in a shelter in and around the rocks – only used in the last 6000 years once the plains got so hot and then flooded. It was an eerie place – you could feel it was ancient and alien territory.<\/p>\n

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There was a wonderful lookout over the green bush & you could look back at the spectacular, incomparable rocks.<\/p>\n

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By this time were pretty tired & dying for a shower! Another good dinner & bed!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Up early to make the most of the \u2018cooler\u2019 mornings and drove 1hr 45 mins south to Gunlam falls. Most things are a long way apart even though we are in the middle of the park! This is the biggest national park in Australia so we need to get used to Australian distances!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.holloway.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.holloway.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.holloway.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.holloway.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.holloway.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=726"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.holloway.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":730,"href":"https:\/\/blog.holloway.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726\/revisions\/730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.holloway.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.holloway.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.holloway.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}