After an incredibly long hiatus, I figured it was time to start synthesizing my last month of travel down under! At the beginning of July I flew to Darwin in true backpacker fashion (see below left), to go on a 10 day bus trip through the Top End and the Outback. The First 6 days of the trip included traveling through the Litchfield and Kakadu National Parks, as well as driving on the Stewart Highway on our way to Alice Springs.
The Top End of Australia is monsoonal, so there are two seasons: a wet and a dry. The winter (when I was there) is the dry season. This means that there is essentially no humidity and no rain, but temperatures are still in the 20s C. This makes in an ideal time to travel to this part of the country. In fact, in the wet many areas are completely inaccessible by road because they are flooded. Regardless of it being the dry, one of the highlights of Litchfield national park was all of the waterfalls. There are heaps of them that end in these gorgeous clear pools. Went spent a lot of the time the first couple of days swimming in these breathtaking waters. In the wet season many of these areas are inaccessible because crocs have access to them, but in the dry the crocs are cut off and they become safe to swim in.
After spending a day in Litchfield we drove to Kakadu national park (top photo). This park is huge (larger than switzerland!!) and extremely beautiful. The landscape is mulga woodland dotted with billibongs (below top). I didn't realize it but, Billibongs are actually oxbow lakes, something I'm extremely familiar with. Oxbow lakes form when a bend in a river becomes cut off from the main river channel. There are a bunch very close to St. Louis, and the lake core samples I have been doing paleoenvrionmental research on are from one of these lakes! So I've unknowingly been working on billibong samples :) Not only was this a really cool discovery, but the lakes themselves are beautiful, hundreds of birds take refuge here and you can hear them all singing. This area of the country (like most of Australia) is interlinked with seasonal burning. It's natural here, and mosaic burning is used to keep fires from getting out of control, and to ensure the natural growth cycle of the native vegetation. The landscape is dotted with small smothering bush fires, its really otherworldly and incredibly cool (below bottom).
We hiked through several areas of the park, but one of the highlights of this part of the trip was going for a crocodile river cruise on the South Alligator River (there are no alligators in Oz this is a total misnomer) with a local aboriginal guide. Our guide was so great, he really helped us connect to the natural and cultural history of the land. And we saw at least 12 huge Salties, or Esturine crocodiles (below)!!! These are the man-eaters and it was amazing to see them in the wild, but obviously not be in the water with them. They are actually beautiful animals with amazing dappled scales.
Our last stop on Top was Katherine Gorge, which we got to kayak through!!!! Now you may have noticed from previous posts, but I love kayaking, so I was so excited to be able to do this in the Top End. We kayaked through a magnificent gorge, on an extremely calm river. And we sawFreshwater Crocodiles while we were kayaking!!! These are much less aggressive and much smaller than the Salties, so it's safe to kayak in areas where they are.
I had originally been on a different bus tour that wouldn't have included the top end, but due to not enough people signing up, I ended up on this one instead. I'm so glad that it worked out this way! The Top End is really unlike any other. It reminds me of the African Savanna, but is still incredibly unique. I loved spending the days hiking and swimming, and it was great to get a bit of summer in the winter before heading south for the rest of the trip!
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