Cooinda 2

Sleep in day. Well, if one can call it sleeping while the entire camp around you is in total uproar from 5.30am onwards as people get ready to go on tours, go fishing, rush the toilets etc. The groundsman reckons that the park is full and that there are about 600 people here. Caravans are in a minority again, tents abound, including three behind us with 27 Indian looking persons going on in the open as if they were still in their flat in Mumbai.

We did a bit of a drive around the park, taking in Jim Jim billabong, which was totally deserted and a revisit to Nourlangie to checkout the rock art again. Funny how things never live up to your memories, still what is on view is pretty good but maybe i was a bit harsh on Injalak.

After lunch at the park's visitors centre and a look through the gallery, we came back for another welcome swim before having an early dinner prior to our evening cruise on the billabong. We had the tasting platter: buffalo, crocodile, kangaroo and barramundi!

The night cruise was interesting. The only thing we could see apart from the moths around the lights, were the zillion stars. Our aboriginal guide told us a few yarns about the milky way, the great emu in the sky, the crocodile man and their version of Eve, whose name i didn't get, but she's in some of the paintings, with many dilly bags hanging from her head. As she walked the land she would scatter the seeds from the bags, thus creating all the food and all the peoples. The crocodile man and Eve then immortalised themselves in the rock forms around the park.