Kakadu

 Wednesday October 5:

Today we took an excursion to Kakadu, the largest land-based national park in Australia at 20,000 square kilometers. It borders Arnhemland, a 100,000 sway referendum kilometer area that is protected aboriginal land. We starts with a scenic flight from Bamarru, flying low over the flood plains, mudflats and grasslands. As we neared Kakadu, a range of sandstone cliffs, representing an ancient sea shore, appeared. The features were very reminiscent of the American southwest, but this sandstone is many millions of years older. Australia has gone through ice ages and continental drift, but hasn’t seen a major uplift event in 180 million years. That explains both the number of species with ancient characteristics (as with the plants in the Daintree) and the age of the exposed Kakadu sandstone.

Kakadu is also one of the oldest locations in Australia in terms of human habitation, and the cliffs display paintings (made with red and yellow ochre, mangenite and white clay paints) across the spectrum of habitation. It is hard to date the paintings a priori as the underlying rock is so old, but the subjects of the paintings give a clue. The oldest paintings date to 20,000 years ago, about the time of the last ice age; scenes including fish date to 8,000 years ago when the sea came closer and the rivers became estuaries; and scenes with fresh water species date to about 1500 years ago, and the most recent reflect contact its Europeans about 200 years ago, for example images of guns.  One interesting aspect is the tendency to draw creatures, particularly fish, with their spines and inner organs depicted. We hiked up to the top of a plateau in the Ubirr sacred site, where both the view and breeze were much appreciated on a 40C day.

After lunch we took a cruise on the East Alligator River with an aboriginal guide. Obviously there are no alligators in Australia; the river was named by an American in 1822. We learned more about aboriginal traditions, including the use of trees and other plants for medicine, hunting equipment, paintbrushes, housing and even burials. We had the opportunity to visit Arnhemland for a few minutes without the usual visas required for white visitors, and saw a number of saltwater crocodiles. Kakadu is home to over 10,000 crocodiles and there are many stories of people who try to cross a river at too high a tide (most of the crossings are at grade and only safe at low tide). The vehicles get swept into the water, and people try to swim to shore rather than drown.. but the crocs get them first.  

Pictured: Kakadu escarpment, paintings of fish and wallaby, Sulphur-crested Cockatoo