30th of July 2008

Who knew that I would find my slice of heaven in Kakadu off all places, people kept on telling me that Kakadu NP (Kakadon't) isn’t as good and special as people claim but I have to disagree. Kakadu has some of the most picture perfect scenery I ever seen, sadly it gets ruined by the large crowds of people and my shitty camera :(
Anyway, at the top of Gunlom falls I found a place like I never seen before, I felt so extremely at home there and felt such tranquility and peace within myself so instead of just staying there for 30 minutes as planned I stayed there the whole day (came around lunch time) and slept at the top despite your not allowed to. Just exploring, enjoying the views, going for swims and reading my book. Would have stayed even longer if it wasn’t for running out of food and hurting myself.
The falls have about a 70m free drop into this huge pool and you can do a hike to the top of it, up there you can go to the edge and look down at the pool under and at the beautiful surrounding landscape. Around you are a couple of rock pools you can swim in, then another small waterfall then another couple of rock pools and then a gorge you can swim in that ends with another waterfall. On top of that waterfall there is such a beautiful river that just keeps on changing the further up you go (talking about only 100-200m) from wide river with lots of shrubbery, beaches and trees on the side to a green river filled with rocks you can walk on, all in this beautiful valley.
But all is not well in paradise, I ended up scorching myself in the sun so bad (and I know how to burn myself bad!). I also slipped on a rock and ripped of the whole nail on one of my toes, owwww! Add all the cuts I have picked up the last 2 weeks plus the whole day at the top of the falls from walking around barefoot so much I now walk like a cripple, sucks because I was looking forward to doing a long hike in Bungle Bungles when I get there. Oh well, here’s a couple of pics from my slice of heaven!







Anyways, I couldn’t find a hostel the last night in Darwin so I ended up walking to the Mindil markets by Mindil beach to have a look around, and when they closed down I found out you can get a lot of free food from the Asians there. So had a proper feed and got enough for breakfast and ended up spending the night on the beach under the stars, good stuff.
Next day I started hitching towards Kakadu which proved to be really easy, 5 rides later I got picked up by a Swiss young fella named Kim that I rode around with the whole day and the next stopping at the places worth looking at in Kakadu including Mamukala, Ubirr, Nourlangie, Yellow Water and Maguk.
Kakadu is Australia’s biggest National Park covering an area of about 20.000 square kilometers (huuuge) and is on the World Heritage List, it also has one of the biggest collections of Rock Art in the world.
As I mentioned a couple of times before my new camera is really bad so couldn’t really capture the beauty of Kakadu very well, also there were people in the way much of the time!
Kim dropped me off in the afternoon in the second day by the Gunlom Falls turnoff and there I stood for 2.5 hours without getting a ride (think like 1 or 2 cars passed) so had to spend the night at the side of the road, but next day around 11 I got a ride into the falls and as I mentioned earlier in this entry I really loved it!
Next day I got a ride with a couple that had a Swedish son in law which meant lots of freebies for me ^^ they dropped me off in Katherine where I waited for over 4 hours without getting a ride and then the couple picked me up again and paid for me to stay at a caravan park. The next day they drove me back to the road to hitch after a big breakfast!
From Katherine I hitched west with one guy the long way into Western Australia and Kununurra through a beautiful road surrounded by cliffs in many places and lots of Boab trees.
So wohooo, I’m back in Western Australia! Almost back in Perth it feels like, only have another 3200 kilometers to go if I go the quickest way, it’s a big state! It is, after the Sakha Republic in Russia, the second largest subnational entity in the world.
Western Australia is about 7.5 times the size of Germany and have around 2.1 million (Germany has 82 million) people living here off which 1.55 million live in Perth. So far between places here, similar to the Northern Territory.
This is also the first time in 4.5 months I’m in a place I’ve been before (did some work here 2 nights in February) which was a weird feeling when I came here, also I’ve seen the stuff to see in town so just taking it easy trying to figure out what to do next while my laundry is drying (apparently it rained during the night so my laundry didn’t dry up). Staying at the hostel here at the moment anyway, want to do a Lower Ord River cruise but it’s so darn expensive so I think Ill skip it and keep going.

edit: Decided to go to Lake Argyle this morning to check it out and the Ord Dam. Got a quick ride there with a shire ranger which showed me around and drove me back to Kununurra. Thats one impressive lake! The southern Hemispheres biggest manmade lake and it can hold up to 10,763,000 megalitres of water! The estimate around 25000 freshwater crocs live in it.