Judy & Brian Tour Oz

Slow and quiet day today, just catching up after the two big days on the road. Wandered over to the Kakadu Info centre, Bowali in indigenous speak. Checked the guided tour time of Ubirr this afternoon, then sat and drank a nice coffee in slow time. As an aside, it is possible that the Bowali cafe has the cheapest lunch in Kakadu, only $6.50 for a toastie or $10 for a burger, as opposed to $24 for a steak sandwich at Cooinda and similar prices at Mary River. Most important job today was to get some more insect killer - those bities! Yikes they bite you right through your clothes. Anyhow, we turned up at Ubirr at the allotted hour. OMG, there were 10,000 freeloaders there already. And just one very quietly spoken Aboriginal guide. This was never going to work, so we tagged along for a short time then made a break on our own, especially as we had seen it all before The art work seemed a bit more worn and weather damaged than last time, but the flood plains seemed greener by contra...

Happy Birthday Muriel Having missed out on the Jim Jim Falls and Twin Falls Tour, we opted for the Arnhem Land Ultimate Experience instead. Arnhem Land for those not familiar with how things work up here, is a restricted area which belongs to and is populated solely by the indigenous owners. To get in you need a permit  potentially available from the NT Aboriginal Land Council in Darwin, or link up with a tour operator who has already greased the wheels. So, getting in for a look is considered a bit special, and of course the major attraction is the rock art, which from all reports is extraordinarily fantastic. The snip you always see is of a square rigged sailing boat and Europeans, assumedly from the 1600 - 1900 period. We had to drive up to Jabiru to meet the tour-bus that had left Darwin at 5am. (now there's one trip i am glad i missed, it's 300km). From Jabiru we travelled out along the road to Ubihr, where we saw some pretty good rock art and scenery last year, and...