KAKADU'S BETTER THAN KATHERINE!

Following on from my "signs you don't see in Victoria" collection! I think the one above is very good advice, ha ha.

Mmmm.....horses, better watch out for them! And they were around, that's for sure, as you can see from the photo below. One had to drive past them very slowly, in case they got spooked. The stallions are really flighty, and so protective of their harem!

You remember the first crocodile sign....."danger, crocodiles COULD be in these waters". Well, how about this one, leaving no doubt at all. Very large crocodiles inhabit these waters, and believe me folks, they do!

We had a wonderful time at Kakadu, what a great part of Australia. The area of Ubirr is famous for its Aboriginal rock art, it is pretty amazing to be looking at something that someone painted at least ten thousand years ago.

A drawing of a thylacine, proving that these animals did indeed inhabit australia thousands of years ago ...............

Some of the artwork is just stunning, a visual insight into the lives of Aboriginal people many, many years ago. For many of them life is no longer busy and fruitful, providing for the tribe and their family - they have slipped into a circle of welfare dependency and it is appalling to drive around these parts and see how this has affected so many of them. Anyway, enough of that! This is not the appropriate place to dwell on such political issues.

Wind and rain have done a great job of eroding many of the rock formations around Kakadu, leaving monoliths such as the above and below - just paradise for picture takers!

Kakadu is so lush and tropical, despite the fact that the wet is so late this year (luckily for us). It is just vast, and the birdlife is amazing, as indeed is the birdlife in the whole of the Territory. There are birds up here I have never seen before, and the parrots and lorikeets are stunning.

And did I mention crocodiles - we went on the Yellow River cruise. The poor guide lady was trying to point out all the different birds, but of course all the people on the cruise wanted to see (really) was CROCODILES! We followed this fulla for ages, just moseying on down the river, checking his terrain. I kept my arms and legs safely inside the boat!!!

And here he is, Mr Jabiru, the symbol of the Northern Territory. Quite unperturbed by the danger lurking by. Peripheral vision is a wonderful thing!!!

More crocodiles, laughing at us no doubt!The scenery as the sun started to set was breathtaking - we took so many photos, and it's always hard to choose the best, so here are just two.

As they say, you'll never never know, if you never never go, so we've been, and now we do know! It's beautiful.

From Kakadu we headed back to Katherine for a couple more weeks in the mango sheds, then set off for Western Australia, which is where we are now. We did a cruise of the Katherine Gorge, so that will be the next lot of photos on the blog, then we will be up to date. Broome is great, we are having a lovely time. We can actually drive down onto Cable Beach in the car, someone had a big grin on his face once he was told he could do that by the ranger! So that's what we do at least once a day - drive onto the beach, park the car, and hit the surf! Life is good!

The far, far north .......

When you go to a fish feeding show in Darwin, you get to hand feed the fish! Great fun and very safe! However, when you go to a Crocodile farm in Darwin, THIS is how the feed the crocodiles ........

I would not like this to be the last thing I get to see!

We had to keep telling ourselves that this was a crocodile farm, not Australia Zoo. They breed crocodiles here for their skins and meat, so it's not pretty and sanitized like Australia Zoo ...there are crocodiles, crocodiles and more crocodiles ..........fancy jumping in the middle of this??????

We really liked Darwin. This probably had a lot to do with the fact that we had been landlocked in katherine in the mango sheds for around a month! It was so nice just to stroll the streets, shop at Mindle markets, go to a decent shopping centre! Swim in a swimming pool, relax, all those wonderful touristy type things. We enjoyed the World War II history of Darwin and the displays at the Museum were fascinating. Warren had been in Darwin for a year and left the night before Cyclone Tracey hit, so it was an interesting time for him, trying to find familiar landmarks after more than 35 years and realising that most of them had probably been blown away.

Darwin's port was really interesting ..................we left when the sky turned THIS colour!

Yep, "the Wet" is well and truly on the way!

Ever seen an oil rig high and dry? we hadn't - it was enormous. the photo below does not do it justice, we would have been fascinated to see them actually towing it out to sea again. It was in port for repairs.

Down the road from Darwin is Litchfield National Park - an amazing area which we really enjoyed visiting. We swam at Wangi Falls - yes, my husband and I paddled across that vast expanse of water to swim under the falls, I was happy there were lots of other people around, so the crocodiles would have a choice of who they would eat first. We both used the grand-kid's noodles - we could have sold them! We carted them from Melbourne to here, just for this one day, and it was really worthwhile, as we were able to stay under the falls for as long as we liked without getting knackered, while others swam across and were too tired to stay for long! So many people commented that they were a great idea! There was a sign there explaining how they monitor the crocodiles and remove any saltwater ones - Warren steered me past this sign very quickly. I must admit I was happy to reach dry land once more, and was a bit nervous each time I saw bubbles coming up from below, but the swim under the falls was so worth it! Just feeling the force of that water pouring down on top of us was something I will remember forever.

The sign says it all!

We had a lovely time at Buley Waterhole - no crocs here!

We thought we'd seen big termite mounds until we got here - these are just massive! Here I am doing my tourist act! This is a cathedral termite mound.And these are magnetic termite mounds - (built by magnetic termites). The build them to face north-south - it looks like a cemetery full of headstones. The Territory sure is a very different part of Australia!

Yes I know it's ages since we did the blog, and we were going to do it while we were doing the second lot of mango packing (remember the photo of the outside washing machine?) Well, 30 ks out of Katherine the internet coverage was not good, so we just could not upload photos. We are now in Broome ( a bloody long way from Melbourne!!!), and coverage is great again. So here we are, and we will do another update next week, with our photos from Kakadu and Katherine Gorge. This area is a photographer's delight!