KAKADU

We arrived in Kakadu yesterday and I was amazed to find I have a limited telephone & Internet access.
Since our last blog:-
(I have just noticed some typos in this blog but because I am doing this on my iPad I can't work out how to scroll down to fix them so please note - further on 'grasses' should be 'grassed' and 'mosses' should be 'mossies'

Saturday 4/6/11 we left Katherine after deciding we would explore there on our return since we have to go through Katherine when we head through to WA. We drove to Leliyn (Edith Falls) campground - about 42km north of Katherine, turn off the highway and another 20km along a good bitumen road. There are some very interesting rock formations along this stretch of road but nowhere to pull over to take photos. Some of them are very similar to devils marbles. This is part of the Nitmiluk National Park. The site is a lovely bush setting. Camp fees are $9 per adult per night and there are toilet, shower and laundry facilities. The lower falls (about 150m from the camp site) are fairly small but the plunge pool is more like a good size lake. The amount of water coming over the falls must be pretty significant judging from the noise of the falls. The water was pretty cold so we didn't swim but a few people did. The ulcers in my mouth are still pretty sore but slowly improving - thank goodness for the Kenalog! I finished reading The Murder of King Tut by James Patterson - interesting reading.

Sunday 5/6/11 my tongue is feeling a bit better still - only very slight soreness. We did the loop walk to the top pool and waterfalls. It was quite warm today and I am glad we started in the morning. There was a very steep part early in the walk and I had to rest a few times and it was pretty hard yakka in some stretches of the track but boy was it worth it! This would have to be one of the most beautiful places in the world! We walked to the phone booth (we had no service on the mobile) to call the kids and living at the top of the booth is the largest huntsman spider I have ever seen! It had to have been at least 6" across. Royce said he has seen them that big before but I hadn't.
Monday 6/6/11 we left Edith falls and drove to Pine Creek. This seems like a really nice little town and we will note it for exploring at some future time. We had phone service in pine creek so made a couple of phone calls and checked emails etc then headed off to Kakadu. We stopped at the Gungural camp site, which we had thought to make our home for a couple of nights. It is written up as a bush camp but it is pretty much all bitumen. There was only one half decent bush camp area and it was already taken. We made lunch then moved on to Mardugal camp (Yellow water region). This is much better. It is a very large camp site with mainly grasses areas, toilets and showers. Camp fees are $10 pp/pn. There is no such thing as a free camp in Kakadu! The mosses are really bad so after coating myself in Bushmans about 4 times I was able to sit outside for a short time. We saw a small flock of black cockatoos on the way here but again there was nowhere to pull over to take photos.
I have been able to write up this blog using my iPad but I haven't been able to get photos uploaded so they will have to come later.
We are booked in to do the Yellow Water cruise so will let you know all about that in due course.
We had hoped to do the Billabong walk while we were here but because of all the recent rains there is too much water (and too many crocs) so the walk is closed. We had planned to stay here for two nights then go on to another area in Kakadu, and will probably do that but we have been told that a lot of Areas are closed off - including many of the walks we wanted to do.