Kakadu NP Part 3

Blog No. 3 Kakadu NP

Now we went further south into Kakadu NP. The Yellow Water area is the most famous and therefore there are also a lot of tourists here (even more than on the crowded camp sites in the Outback). We decided to have a chill day and therefore stayed at the camp site of the lodge. Here we did laundry and didn't hang around doing nothing. The walk through the Yellow Water area was closed and we had already seen the lookout. We didn't convince ourselves to take a boat tour - it was really too expensive for us (even though we don't watch every dollar). Also, you are then on the boat with a lot of other tourists. Then we moved on to the Maguk Falls. Here a ca. 1.5 km long path led to the falls. We decided to walk to the upper pools - they were above the waterfall. The ascent was difficult - but there were many beautiful smaller and larger natural pools up there. It was difficult with the rocks, but even Sven went swimming :-) Sina dared to go to the edge of the waterfall and then also started wobbling, which made Sven and me scared - she scared herself so much that she didn't climb around everywhere anymore... Since we still had some time in the day, we continued driving and our next destination was Gunom Falls. 36 km of dirt road - phew, that wasn't easy. The camp site was remote but still well-visited. The waterfall filled a very beautiful lake, which was located in the rainforest and surrounded by lots of bushes and rocks. This lake was only 200m from the camp site. So we went bathing in the evening - but didn't dare to swim too far out in the evening. The next morning we walked up to the cliffs to bathe in the pools up there. They were very beautiful and not too crowded. We followed the river a little further up and then we were all alone - with many little water holes and the longed-for tranquility of the Outback. We also saw animal tracks (monitor lizard). After we were back down, we decided to stay one more night - it was from Saturday to Sunday and the campsite got even fuller. In the afternoon, we took a very nice walk to the next billabong, where we also saw some wild horses. On the walk, we then came to the South Alligator River - now in the dry season, a small manageable river where we could once again enjoy the peace and quiet. On the way, we found firewood and in the evening, we had (once again) noodles :-) Before dinner, we went bathing once again at the waterfall and even swam across the lake to the waterfall. Here we met 2 Australians with a diving mask and snorkel who told us that they had seen a crocodile. As soon as we were in the water, the crocodile swam on the lake - it was a freshy and the ranger told us in the evening: "it is a good guy" well - he seemed to be right - the crocodile is supposed to be 2m long. The ranger also said that 2 crocodiles hang around at the waterfall... The next morning, we packed everything up again and took the dirt road back to the Kakadu Highway - next destination - Pine Creek. The old gold rush town of Pine Creek has fewer inhabitants than Kippenhausen - but a museum, a shop, a gas station, a bar, and even a post office, but unfortunately it was closed on Sunday. Everything was concentrated around the gas station - in the supermarket we got everything we needed and in the bar we could finally buy a beer for our fridge (finally :-) ). Before that, we visited the railway museum. After Pine Creek, we drove along the railway tracks for a while and an actual freight train came along - with 3 locomotives - unfortunately, I didn't find a place to stop immediately, so we could only see the first part properly; the train was in any case very very long. Now we are at Edith Falls - a beautiful lake also with a small waterfall. The campground is quite commercial. Fires are not allowed and we were assigned a camp site. Tomorrow we will do the walk here to the upper part of the waterfall and then drive towards Katherine.