Kakadu Time!!!

5th June 2013

We were up before day break this morning to make sure we got a chance to say goodbye to George before he left for work. With that done we spent some time having breakfast, doing school work and updating journals and blogs. The girls also spent a bit of time writing thank you notes to George and leaving them scattered throughout the house for when he got home to find. I reckon they would have written about 20 each and put them in cupboards, on toilet seats, around beer bottles, on statues and George's fishing ute to name just a few, I'm sure he'll get a laugh out of it.

After packing down the van we set off around 10.30am, bound for Kakadu National Park, some 180kms away. Along the way we stopped off at The Bark Hut Inn which was a pioneering area for the cattle trade before making our way into Kakadu.

Rach outside the Bark Hut Inn

After stopping at the entrance gate, we also stopped off at South Alligator, as George and his wife Sandra had worked there for about 6 years prior to moving to Marrakai. From there we drove over the South Alligator River, spotting our first good size croc sunning itself on the bank at low tide, before making our way to the Merl Campground where we have set up for the next 2 days.

Entrance to Kakadu National Park - Arnhem Highway

As the campground is near the East Alligator River, we took the rods down to see if we could get lucky and bag ourselves a Barra for dinner. The girls and I gave it a good go, flicking lures for a good hour or so without any luck. Looking at the tides they seem better tomorrow morning, so we'll come back and it give it another crack then before going to Ubirr and checking out the rock art in that area.

Chloe fishing at East Alligator River

Where we were fishing was just down from Cahill's Crossing, which is the river crossing that leads into Arnhem Land, a trip that Rach & I would be keen on doing in years to come.

Cahill's Crossing

We returned to camp and started the fire and were just tucking into dinner & settled in for the night, or so we thought! However not long after sunset, we were set upon by the biggest plague of Mosquitos I have ever seen and they were ferocious. We tried to set a smokey fire & we lit Sandalwood sticks to try and keep them at bay.

Our little Pyromaniac - just like her old man!

Just before we made the call to race inside, Maggie was holding one of the Sandalwood Sticks and a mozzie buzzed near her face, so she thought it might help to scare it away by waving the stick at it. Unfortunately she touched the end of her nose and burnt it, also dropping some hot ash and burning some holes in the chair she was sitting on, luckily she wasn't badly burnt, more a fright than anything, which was lucky.

Our camp site just before being invaded by Mozzies!

Anyway we dashed inside the van and decided that we would not turn on the main lights so as not to attract any of the mozzies into the van, meaning we did everything by torch light, including playing a guessing game that Maggie had come up with, which was a bit of fun. It was a good call because we could hear the mozzies buzzing around every window pretty much for the whole night. Couple that with some high humidity, no breeze (until the middle of the night when a good breeze kicked in, which was sensational) and it all made for a pretty restless night sleep for all of us and certainly a funny memory of our first night of camping in Kakadu.