8 June 2013 – Kakadu National Park – Gunlom, Pine Creek, Barunga

We again said farewell to our friends this morning and continued on our travels, this time to Gunlom in the far south of Kakadu National Park.  We dropped off the van at a rest stop area on our way in as we weren’t looking forward to a slow trip with it and having lost of dust inside it once we got there.  This is another magnificent tall waterfall which has a great big plunge pool below.  However, it wasn’t the lower plunge pool that we were entirely interested in.  At the top of the waterfall were some other small plunge pools that many people went swimming in.  Mum again decided that the steep climb wasn’t for her so she remained at the bottom relaxing in the lower plunge pool.  The four of us decided to hit the track to the top.  It was a steep climb up the side of the mountain that took us a bit less than half an hour and was so worth it.  There is a big pool at the top which is split into around 3 sections and the water is pristine.  It flows from a little section above this swimming area, through the divided up pool that we swam in, and then overflows into another small pool which is down another level on the other side of the pool, and then drops down the side of the mountain into the large plunge pool below… awesome!  Whilst swimming in the pools at the top, you can sit on the edge and overlook all the flat land that surrounds you so in fact this pool is an infinite pool at the top of a waterfall – it’s stunning!  We climbed back down the mountain and picked mum up, who had gone for a swim in the plunge pool below and then returned the car and drove back out to pick up the van.  In doing so, we grabbed a sandwich and then went on our way.  After many more kilometres we stopped in at Pine Creek to fuel up before driving on into Katherine to pick up some supplies.  Our next stop was another 70kms out of Katherine at the aboriginal town of Barunga.  We were here just for a couple of nights for a music, sport and cultural festival.  Alcohol was banned from this event therefore on the road into town, the police were pulling everyone over to check for grog.  We were honest and told them about what we had in the van but promised not to touch it, so fortunately the police let us through on our promise – and we stuck to it.  A cold beer or wine would have been great as the heat had picked up and we were free camping these few nights without any air-conditioning.  Luckily we had topped up our water tanks and could all shower in the van, as the dirt and dust was making us look more like the aboriginal people.  It felt good to have a wash before bed.  Anyway – it was pretty late in the afternoon so after setting up, we walked the 5-10 minutes from the van to where all the action was happening.  We had just missed the aboriginals doing their local dance which was a bummer but we had a look around at what else was taking place.  We ended up returning with our chairs in the evening for the concert which had lots of local talent.  It had thankfully started to get cooler, dropping to around 20 degrees, so we headed back for our showers and just sat outside listening to the bands which didn’t finish up until around midnight.