Kakadu: Rock Art and birds in Ubirr & Nourlangie (NOTES ONLY)

Notes only. Photos and narrative to come.

Got up early and after brekkie headed up to view aborigine rock art Ubirr. Heard explanations by Russ, an aboriginal Park Ranger first at the “Main Gallery” then at the Rainbow Serpent site, and finally at a site illustrating several codes of behavior. In between we walked up to a plateau from which we had a 360 degree view of the Nadab floodplain and the hills beyond.

Returned to Bowali Visitor Center where we ate our lunch out of the sun.

Drove to Nourlangie Rock Art sites for self-guided tour, as there were no ranger talks in very hot middle of the day. Thank goodness for our insect-screen hats; the flies would have driven us mad.

Did a very long (2.5 km) walk around the Anbangbang Billabong. Saw dozens of noisy Red-tailed Black Cockatoos, the usual thousands of Magpie Geese, Pelicans, and Egrets, as well as a rather large Wallaby and the infamous poisonous Central American Cane Toad, introduced by Queensland sugar cane farmers from to control a sugarcane beetle and now responsible for wreaking havoc with native Australian wildlife as far away as Darwin and Kakadu.

Back to the campsite where we met a peripatetic backpacker French couple with whom we shared our dinner, as well as a couple of Aussies who worked at the Uranium mine near Jabiru and lived in trailers at the campsite. They were grilling their first caught Baramundi and were pretty pleased with themselves.