The McCookie Travels: September 2014

Hi All

Well, we have finally dragged ourselves away from Darwin! Having initially booked for 4 days, we ended up staying in Darwin for 4 weeks! It was hard to leave as it was such a beautiful and tranquil place. However, when the bushfires came upto the boundary, we realised it was time to leave! Steve diligently, (with cup of tea in hand), did his bit to dampen down the ground in case the wind blew in our direction, however, as we were camped on the edge of a billabong there was no real danger!

So, from Darwin, we headed to the long awaited Kakadu National Park, and as hoped, it has completely lived up to expectation. It’s over 10 years since Steve and I were last there and I was really keen to share it with the girls. We had a wonderful week in Kakadu, we all thoroughly enjoyed it, however, I feel the cultural experience may have missed the girls because when, as we were heading south and leaving the park, I asked them both what the highlight of Kakadu had been, Rosie’s reply was “the best thing was I didn’t have to do any schoolwork”!! and Megan’s was “I got to watch a movie in the Visitor Centre”. Hmmm, so the fact that it’s the oldest continuing rock art site in the world, a World Heritiage Site, outstanding natural beauty and wildlife, clearly passed them by!!! Oh well, at least we all had fun, even if it wasn’t for the reasons I’d expected!!

Highlights for Steve and I were definitely the rock art sites, in particular at Ubir Rock and Nanguluwar, watching the crocs roll over the road to catch barramundi at high tide at Cahill’s Crossing and also some fabulous waterholes, favourites being Gunlom Falls, which was just like an infinity pool at the top of the falls (can’t swim at the bottom waterhole due to the pesky crocs!). Luckily crocs can’t make the very steep climb to the top! Also we had a wonderful day at Maguk waterhole which I must say, every now and again, when the water was too deep to see the bottom, my mind did play tricks on me about whether there were crocs waiting for the slowest swimmer in the family (that would be me!).

Anyway, Sept seems a really good time to visit Kakadu and for anyone who hasn’t been, I highly recommend it. Its really quiet in the Park now, and on several walks we had the place to ourselves, which was bliss. It was a rather sticky 38 degrees most days so we tended to go for our walks early in the morning, have our picnic lunch somewhere then go swimming in the afternoons to cool off. Perfect!

We’ve now left Kakadu and spent a couple of nights at Mataranka Hot Springs and Bitter Springs by Elsey National Park. Both springs were glorious with the water being a constant 32 degrees…..”oooh, lovely” as Megan would say!!

We are now on the long drive to Alice Springs, where we are looking forward to visiting Uluru and the McDonnell Ranges. I’ll keep you posted!

Till next time!

xxx