6 June 2013 – Kakadu National Park – Ubirr, Nourlangie and Nawurlandja

Our day started by driving about 30kms north to Ubirr to participate in a few ranger talks.  This area is famous for its rock art starting with “Grandma’s Kitchen”.  Our first ranger talk was below a large rock with rock art from one side of it, right across to the other side and showed paintings of all types of bush tucker such as wallabies, fish, emus, etc.  Our second lesson took us to Rainbow Serpent Gallery and is the most sacred site at Ubirr.  They say that rainbow serpent visited this site and she painted her image on the rock here to remind people of her visit.  We also learnt a little about the skin names and relationships/ families amongst their tribes – it is so complicated that I got lost after the first level.  Our last ranger talk was here in a “classroom”.  It is here that aboriginal children would learn the laws that they should abide by and further dreamtime stories.  Surprisingly some of these made sense to us.  To end our time here at Ubirr, we climbed to the top of the Ubirr rock where we had the most beautiful panoramic view overlooking the floodplains and escarpments.  After leaving Ubirr, we went for a drive to watch some local aboriginals doing some artwork before heading to Cahill Crossing, on the East Alligator River, in search of a large saltwater crocodile that we’d been told about.  Unfortunately, we didn’t see it but there was a lone guy fishing off the water crossing – “crazy” I say!  After some food and relaxing in the pool, the time flew by and we were back out of the caravan park bound for Nourlangie, another rock site, this time south of Jabiru.  Again we were in the hands of the rangers for some free information.  It was about a 1.5km circuit and we were taken to an ancient aboriginal shelter and some more outstanding art sites which deal with aboriginal mythology.  It was nearing sunset when we finished up so we jumped in the car and headed to Nawurlandja which is a recommended lookout not far away.  However, to get the best views we needed to climb up a moderately steep slope of about 600 metres.  The views when we reached the top were amazing and well worth the climb.  Unfortunately, there was quite a bit of cloud cover about and we didn’t get the sun shining across onto the escarpment over at Nourlangie but nevertheless it was beautiful anyway.