It was the 5.30 alarm this morning again, ready for the 6.30 departure. There were lots of little wallabies springing around on the road, one very small indeed and either too inexperienced or too muddled to actually cross the road, just going boing boing boing down the road in front of our vehicle.
We had quite long drive to our first stop. The main part of the drive was through a landscape I have been referring to as grassland with trees. I have now discovered that the correct term is savannah woodland. It is quite unlike African savannah, because there are far more trees. Like the African savannah, it is regularly burned, in this case to lessen the chance of wildfires. We passed a number of smouldering areas. Eventually we approached the roch escarpment which I think marks the edge of Arnhem Land, and that is the area where there are rock paintings. This is known as the stone country; the landscape is quite different, with beetling, mostly red, cliffs all round.
At the first stop, there was a fair bit of rock scrambling, which I found quite trying, and quite a few difficult places to get to. The paintings, unfortunately, do not photograph well, though I took quite a lot of photographs.
Many of the paintings are over 2000 years old, some are thought to be 5000 years old. Some are about the food that can be caught, others are illustrating stories, like the sisters who turned themselves into crocodiles. They didn't need their human teeth any more, so they planted them by the riverbank and they turned into a variety of tree whose name now escapes me. Aboriginal children are taught that, when they see those trees, they should not go near the water because the crocodile sisters might get them. Another story was about obeying the laws. The ranger who told us this story explained that the local people who live in the area have rules about who can and can't eat barramundi. Apparently, only old people are allowed to eat the big barramundi, and if a young person catches one, he can't eat it, he has to give it to an old person. Paul approved of that! Apparently, if the young person is lucky, the old person will invite him to share part of the fish, then the young person is allowed to eat it. Sometimes, young women are not allowed to eat barramundi until they have undergone a certain ceremony. After seeing the rock paintings, we climbed up to the lookout point, where we had a fabulous 360 degree view over the floodplains.
We drove to a picnic spot for lunch, and in the burning sun, the vehicle was becoming unbearable. The over-heating engine where I was sitting made everything so hot, and if you were sufficiently unwise to leave your bottle of water on the floor, it became hot enough to make coffee. I was very glad when we reached our next stop, though it was a very hot walk. For the first part of the walk, we were surrounded by signs warning us of crocodiles, including one on a riverbed which was completely dry, so we became a bit disconcerted and began to wonder why we had swimsuits on and were being taken to swim.
However, it soon became clear why there were no crocodiles in the upper parts of the river - they couldn't manage the climb over the rocks. I could hardly manage it myself, the rocks were very slippery with sand and I made very slow progress indeed. Once we were in the rocks, the journey was made more difficult by the large biting flies, and in between rock scrambling, we were all madly windmilling our arms, jumping up and down, and slapping various parts of our body. One of our fellow travellers believed this to be the original of some aboriginal dances!
After such a hot and difficult walk, it was wonderful to lie in the cool clear water, and there were lots of small fish to watch. However, the fish started to bite as well, and what with the flies biting any part of the body not in the water, and the fish biting any parts of the body that were in the water, it was not an entirely successful outing. And there was the long hot rock scramble to look forward to, back to the vehicle.
Then there was another very hot journey for some hours in the vehicle to get to our camping spot near the town of Jabiru (it's pronounced 'Jabba-roo', like 'kangaroo'). This was a very superior camp site, with a wonderful swimming pool, and that's where we all went immediately to cool off. I was really too tired to swim, but I sat in the lovely cool water.
I was very exhausted, and after managing to post the text of Sunday's trip (I found the camp had a phone signal) and helping to make the supper, I was really too tired to eat anything much, and just went to bed. A consequence of this meant, of course, I had to rise in time to shower, so the alarm had to be set for 5 a.m.!
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