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Welcome to Australia Jean, let’s go see the crocodiles. After a visit to one of Darwin’s well known outdoor markets, we left the city a day early to head to Kakadu National Park. Kakadu has been recognized as a World Heritage Park because of its diverse species as well as its Aboriginal culture and history. It turns from a drastically dry and fire swept countryside in the “winters” to a bright green and flooded area in the “summers.” We arrived at the end of the dry season known as the “build up.” Every afternoon, clouds build and build in the sky, making you think a storm is inevitable. Only when it barely starts to sprinkle do the clouds start to deteriorate and float away. This is also the hottest time of year up here. Thank the Aboriginal Rainbow Serpent for air conditioning in the big RV.

Our first stop in the park was a casual stroll along the East Alligator River at Ubirr. There are actually no alligators in Kakadu, or anywhere in Australia for that matter, but … oh my god … there are crocodiles. We were not expecting to actually see one and when we got to the first lookout along the trail, not even five minutes from the car, BJ spotted a dark shadow in the water. Sure enough … crocodile. Thankfully, since we visited the Steve Irwin Zoo along the east coast, we remembered that crocodiles will not chase after anything on land as their very heavy tail makes them extremely slow. But they do strike right at the water’s edge and it is advised to not approach the edge of the water or hang out over the water on, let’s say, a viewing platform. We were well away from the water so we hung out and watched and Jean convinced herself that we invited her to Australia just so we could feed her to the crocodiles.

During the very hot afternoon, BJ and I strolled to the Ubirr rock art sites, a number of galleries depicting drawings that were made thousands of years ago using either ochre or blood. Aborigines used rock art to share stories and the act of drawing the art was more important to them than the artwork itself. They would paint directly on top of an old drawing. So each rock art “gallery” could have hundreds of layers of drawings. The figures and forms were mostly obvious and included different kinds of fish, kangaroos, crocodiles, turtles, as well as humans with dilly bags and spears. One of the things that distinguish Aboriginal art is the depiction of internal organs and bones in each of the animals or human figures. They refer to this as x-ray art. We made one more stop before heading back to camp to walk to the top of a lookout over Arnhem Land and Jean, the trooper that she is, grabbed her walking sticks and made her way up the steep incline along with us.

We stayed in Kakadu National Park for two nights and on the second morning took an early morning boat cruise up the Yellow River. It was an awesome tour and way better than we expected. We saw tons of birds. Some of them could walk across lily pads and looked like they were walking on water. The Darter had a very long neck and actually spent most of his time spearing fish under water. Another one, called the “fire starter” learned that it could move a burning stick to a new area if it wanted to eat escaping grubs and bugs. But even with so many birds it was hard not to be constantly scanning the waters for another set of spikes or a pair of eyes barely breaching the surface. Once again we were surrounded by crocs and for some reason they always seemed to appear closest to Jean. The boat captain assured us that the crocs are used to these boats, but they looked pretty hungry to me. At one point a crocodile splashed out of the water and was heading straight towards a flock of geese along the shore. It made us all jump until the boat captain started yelling out “get a duck, get a duck, get a duck!!”

We left Kakadu and drove towards Katherine Gorge, where BJ and I had spent a couple nights about three weeks ago. We felt like we had the entire campground to ourselves and spent much of the day in and out of the salt water pool. After two nights in Katherine we made our way south to the popular outback pub of Daly Waters to set up camp for the night. It definitely felt like the off season at the pub but it was easy to picture the place bumping with people. Jean encountered tons of frogs in the bathroom, one of which was hiding out below the toilet seat and got a bit of a ride when she flushed the toilet. We had dinner at the pub and then hit the sack as BJ and I had to be up at 1:30am for a quarterly meeting at Vertical Media. We attempted to sleep for a few hours and then woke up to coffee and breakfast just before the meeting. With the very loud hum of the air conditioner, Jean managed to stay asleep on her bed in the back of the rig as we jabbered away on our computers in the wee hours of the day. Needless to say, we were pretty tired throughout the rest of the day.

We are now in the outback town of Tennant Creek, slowly making our way down to Alice Springs and Uluru. We explained to Jean that there is no sign that announces that you’ve arrived in the outback. It’s just a feeling that overcomes you. You might be spacing out for a while, watching the scenery go by, and all of a sudden, you announce “hey, we’re in the outback.” Jean experienced this epiphany today as we crested the top of a small hill. “Okay,” she said, “now we are in the outback.”