On Monday morning Charlotte and I got our passes for the Kakadu National Park. While you have to pay a small entrance fee of about 10 AUD per vehicle at nearly every national park in WA, in the Northern Territory there are only two national parks where you have to pay 25 AUD per person: the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park and the Kakadu National Park.
We stopped at the Mary River Roadhouse at the Southern end of the park and saw a hand-written sign on the door that Germany has won the FIFA Football World Cup against Argentinia in Brazil! HURRAY! That's right, I travelled the West Coast during the World Cup and most of the time I had no clue what was going on as we had no internet. (But, sheez, 7:1 against Brazil...)
In a fairly happy mood about this we first headed for the Bukbukluk lookout to get an first impression about the surroundings of Kakadu.
Okay, probably not the best first impression. Kakadu is a famous wetlands of the Top End. But moreover it is known for its cultural heritage of the Aborigines. So after securing a camping spot at the caravan park of Cooinda we got to the Cultural Center. Unfortunately it is not allowed to take pictures inside the building. The exhibition is very impressive and well-done. We both liked it very much.
Then we drove on to the Yellow Waters famous for its nice surroundings, the bird life, the spectacular sunsets and lots of wild animals like crocodiles.
Despite the boardwalk we were actually quite scared to be so close to the water and only had a quick look around the area.
Happy to have not been attacked by a crocodile (seriously, just two weeks before a man has been taken by a saltwater crocodile in Kakadu, so the danger is real!) we drove back to the caravan park and had a quick look around and found more crocodile warning signs, partly even written in German. Well, apparently Germans are known for jumping into every billabong they see...
We spent the rest of the afternoon at the pool of the caravan park and enjoyed the sunshine. For whatever reason a guy called Shaun approached us and asked if we had a 4WD to get around Kakadu. As we haven't got one he offered us to take us around the next day together with his sister and her husband as they have two spare seats. It turned out that Shaun is a professional tour guide for this region who took some days off to take his sister and brother-in-law around. How lucky are we!!!
For dinner we had sausages from the BBQ with sweet corn and onions. We also had a chat with Shaun, his sister Katherine and her husband Phil about the details of the next day.
Our next stop: Twin Falls and Jim Jim Falls!
Yours cultural-center-appreciating-and-lucky Stefanie
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Have your say now! Would you do the same thing or would you do it differently? Do you have any travel tipps for me for my onwards travels? let me know!