Relax and feel the Spirit

Finally it's time to hit the road again, after an extended stay in Darwin, and with some of the best and "most wanted to visit" destinations ahead of us, we were more than keen to get going.

Our first stop Litchfield National Park  which stunned us with the raw beauty of its gorges, and waterfalls with  deep crystal clear  pools to swim in and lounge around on these hot winter days. The climate is also good for the unique magnetic termites mounds,
which are found in this part of the world. Many people believe
Litchfield to be better than the world famous Kakadu National Park, but we'll kept an open mind until we had seen both.We were heading for Pine Creek in Northern Territory for a spot of Gold detecting, on rout to the southern end of Kakadu National Park.
Gold was discovered there in 1872 by workers on the overland telegraph line. ( I bet they didn't work again) Pine Creek has a long gold history and is the top end's only original mining town remaining from the 1870's gold rush era, with many of the original buildings still in use, such as the National Trust museum building, being the oldest surviving prefabricated structure in Northern Territory.  There is an impressive collection of artifacts and implements of the day on display.

Right through the middle of town there is a park with rock pools and grassed picnic area's, with mosaic foot paths, telling the history of Pine Creek, all using reclaimed land and materials that was once the railway line.

We headed off out of town on the Goldfields heritage trail to Grove Hill Heritage Hotel to learn more about this fascinating area. Sighting mines currently owned by Crocodile Gold in various locations en route, we began to wonder were the public fossicking areas were?

Over a coldy at the Grove Hotel all was revealed by a couple of locals, it appears  that Crocodile Gold did own everything, bought up all the leases. The dirt tracks we saw going off into the bush were prospecting tracks, but don't get caught the penalty is pretty stiff, but its the only way your going to find gold in Pine Creek. There are folks up in Darwin who are trying to get some land gazetted for public fossicking but everything is a  slow process in the Northern Territory, were time is not the same. So it seems there was to be no prospecting for us at Pine Creek, but I did get to cut Laurie's Hair which like the gold is a rare occurrence.

We found a bush camp called Harriet Creek on the doorstep of Kakadu, were we could base ourselves for a couple of days or so whilst waiting for some of the sites to open after the wet season. You see the road through the park is good, but roads off to various locations are dirt, often flooded and some horribly corrugated, so it was time to sit, relax and feel the  spirits of this country for a while.

Harriet's Creek was shallow but still flowing and with no Crocs in sight we spent many happy hours playing with Mylee in the shade of the Paper bark trees along the bank.

On finding an abundance of Rosella Bush's we set about making some bush tucker Rosella jam, great with Laurie's damper, yum! 

Opposite our camp in a hollowed tree trunk, a family of Cockatoo's kept us entertained with their antics in and around the nest.

The days were a  comfortable 30 degrees and our few days at Harriet's Creek quickly turned into a week, during which time we grilled other travelers who stopped about their Kakadu experience, and which places were worth visiting. There are seven areas in all with many kilometers in between and often with many more kilometers to walk once reaching the place, so planning and fuel was of paramount importance. It was the need of fuel for the adventure which moved us on 30 kilometers to the Mary River roadhouse, were we could also safely leave our van.

Kakadu is a living cultural landscape, generations of Bininj and Mungguy people have cared for this country for tens of thousand of years, it is their cultural obligation to look after and cleanup the land, a duty handed down from generation to generation.

There are six seasons in Kakadu and signs in nature tell them of the time to burn, a time when minimal harm would be done but huge benefits would be gained. Using this traditional land burning practice,  the landscape has flourished and is a testimony to its success with abundant life.

Aboriginal spiritual connection to the land is globally recognized in the Kakadu's world heritage listing which honors one of the oldest living societies on earth. The rock art found here represents one of the longest historical records of any group of people in the world and it was the rock art at Nourlangie we had come to see. It is said that Mimi spirits were the first of the Creation Ancestors to paint on rock, and they taught some Bininj people how to paint. At the end of their journeys some Creation Ancestors put them selves on rock walls as paintings and became dreaming places (djang). Some of these paintings are sacred and dangerous and can only be seen by senior men or women; others can be seen by all people. In some cases the act of painting can put one in touch with their Creation Ancestors - powerful stuff! but the act of painting is generally more important than the painting itself, so many older paintings are covered by younger ones.

I could rave on for ages about Kakadu but really its a place to go sit , relax and feel the spirits.
I think Litchfield may be prettier and as a tourist certainly easier to access but Kakadu is a special place which requires time to explore and appreciate the diversity which is truly unique.