Kakadu/Darwin

For my last couple of days with the camper, I cruised over to Kakadu National Park, which is a remote World Heritage Site famous for Aboriginal rock art and culture.  I stayed the night at a caravan park run by an annoyed-to-be-disturbed proprietor (Is it me?  What did I do?).

I booked a tour for the next day into Arnham Land, which is a pretty unexplored and unvisited part of Australia.  It's set aside for the Aboriginals to live how they want and not be disturbed.  You have to have a permit to go there, which was arranged by the tour company.  A group of eight of us went in a 4WD bus across the border.  We were told that we would meet some residents and have the opportunity to purchase some art.

I was expecting some Stone Age situation, but we arrived in a village that seemed about like any other dusty Outback town. It had a school and relatively modern buildings and a construction crew erecting some new structure.  Our permit was to visit the art gallery and we were sternly instructed that we could not go across the street or anywhere else.

I've been trying to figure out the Aboriginal situation since I've arrived here.  Australia is a wealthy and progressive country and yet is populated by a good number of these people who are not merely unsuccessful, but decimated.  I mean, they have it rough.  You see them around town and they sleep in the roadside hedges or in the parks.  When they're awake, usually in the evening, they are wandering around drunk and fighting or crying or staring into emptiness. It's not like some of them are shopkeepers or run a restaurant but some don't do as well.  None of them make it, as far as I can see.  Zero. 

Anyway, we went to the art gallery and there was some very nice art that people were making.  This huge chain-smoking man with some tumors on his face was painting a basket.  He was wearing a Lakers shirt and painting slowly and deliberately in between tugs off his smoke (cigs are $18 a pack here, I couldn't help but think).  Some people felt encouraged to ask questions and nodded smilingly and understandingly when they got an mumbled response in an arcane dialect of Yolngu.  There were some white people there organizing the place and working the cash register.  On the tour there was a girl from Boston who is traveling around Australia for five weeks.  She really wanted to buy a spear, but didn't know if she could make it through airport security.  Shipping it was far too expensive, I guess.  I was hoping she'd buy it so I could chuckle about her wandering through Australia for another month carrying a spear, but she didn't bite.

Our guide took us out to look at some rock art, which was interesting enough, although it was a little hard to tell whether it was stenciled yesterday or in 2000 BC.  The guide told some stories about creation myths and serpents and how this represented that.  I didn't get the feeling that he really knew, or if anybody really knew.  I suppose the artist knew.  Maybe he/she was just doodling.

We came home that evening and I went out to catch the sunset at a rock mentioned by the guide.  When I got there, I saw some interpretive signs saying how it was a very special place and was the dwelling of a god.  I waited around for the sunset while getting attacked by biting flies on every exposed inch.  Finally I gave up.  The god can have his rock, fine by me.

Waiting at the border crossing for the tide to recede across the road:

I could insert a photo here of the painting guy or the one-legged lady with cataracts sitting in garbage under a tree, but I didn't feel very heartened to take photos of them.

Sunset from Ubirr (the first night, not the biting fly night)

On the way to Darwin the next day I pulled off the road at the Original Adelaide River Jumping Crocodile Cruise.  On this riverboat there was a guy who tied a pork chop to the end of a fishing line and hung it out for the crocs.  It didn't take long at all for some big crocs to swim over.  You definitely don't want to go swimming around here.

In Darwin was a good military museum.  They had some gun emplacements and all sorts of period artifacts.  The city was bombed several times by the Japanese and many Allied ships were sunk, including this US Navy destroyer.

It was hotter than blazes in Darwin, and the hostel proprietor dropped me off at the military museum which was several miles from downtown.  I walked all the way back in the midday heat and it was excruciating.  I was actually moaning and talking to myself, feeling cold chills from time to time.  A couple of times I found water fountains, which was good.

and, finally, the best Coca-Cola of all time.