Kakadu Day 1

Almost from the minute we turned off the Stuart Highway, the vegetation and landscape seemed to change from what we had been watching north of Katherine. For the next 100+ km there was unrelenting, unchanging savannah woodland. After a while, it sounds bad but, I kind of got sick of the sameness of it. I mean, there we were, driving through a world famous National Park, and I was bored by it... ooops! About the only highlight was seeing a family of 4 wild buffalo, which was very cool. Unfortunately towing a 24' van means we can't just stop immediately to take photos. Most of the time I am rapt in the environment we are travelling through. There are some parts of the outback, some of the most desolate, barren parts where there is nothing but red rock and dirt and very sparse vegetation, where the country soaked into my heart and soul. I can see why people head to the outback to be farmhands and work the land in this inhospitable part Australia. There are parts where I have felt my mood lift and my heart hum along with the beat of the country. The woodland savannah of Kakadu had the opposite effect for me... I was just bored.

We stopped the first night at the Mary River Roadhouse, which is just outside the national park. The main reason we stayed there was so we could visit Gunlom Falls without having to back track. The owners are very friendly and welcoming, to the kids as well, which was nice.

Gunlom Falls are pretty cool and promoted as one of the tourist “must do's”. It's a pretty rough road in... 36km of fairly corrugated dirt but definitely worthwhile. There is about a 100m uphill climb (up rocks and stone steps, some of them almost too big for me) to get to the top of the falls, but once up there you get to a spectacular set of pools. The climb was tough... very, very tough in the heat of the day. It was pretty much climbing straight up the cliff face using natural steps. It felt harder than the climb to the Rim Walk at Kings Canyon and I'm not sure if it is because the climb is harder or because it was just so much hotter. I'm pretty sure they're about the same height and steepness. But it is doable, even with Rory, and I saw people of all fitness levels and ages making the climb.
The very first pool is widely advertised as one of the only natural infinity pools and with the low volume of water flowing over the falls, it is completely safe to use. We decided to go a bit further up to a deeper, larger and less populated pool. This was a great choice for us. While it didn't have the same view of the valley below, owing to rocks in the way, it made up for it in fun, space and less crowd. We were able to swim and explore and enjoy this amazing pool to our hearts content. I have no idea how deep it was, but you could jump in and not touch the bottom. It was so deep that you couldn't see the bottom, unlike some of the pools closer to the waterfall edge. At one part of the edge of this pool the rocks continued to slope down under the water in a gentle decline. These rocks were slippery...as in incredibly, dangerous if you walk on them slippery... and the kids had a wonderful time using them as an in pool water slide. I even got in on the fun on the steepest edge, which sent you plunging off into the deeper water.

View from the lookout at the top of Gunlom Falls

The "infinity pool" at the top of Gunlom Falls

 

There is also a beautiful plunge pool at the bottom of the falls. The lady at the Katherine Information Centre recommended that we only swim at the top of the falls, however people were swimming in the plunge pool and looking at it, I would imagine that it was perfectly safe (from crocodiles) at the time we were there. I think, despite my croc phobia, I probably would have swum there, but we were hot and tired and ready to head back to the caravan.

One of the problems of doing it how we did is that we got to Gunlom Falls around 2pm, so it was a very hot time of day to try to climb such a steep hill. Not the smartest thing to do, but unless we wanted to spend a second night at Mary River in order to do the falls early in the morning, it was kind of the only way to do it. It worked out OK, and it was definitely worthwhile but I wouldn't really recommend climbing the cliff face in the middle of the day if you can avoid it. I carried Rory for some of it but then my legs got all rubbery so Greg pretty much carried him most of the rest of the way.

At every waterway in the National Park you see crocodile warning signs. I don't know why I found this one so funny... I think it's the guy being eaten off the bank. It made us laugh.