Sat 11th – There are some who say Kakadu is wonderful and has to be visited, others who say don’t bother. The ones who say don’t bother, have most likely been here to come to that conclusion, so they made up their own minds. That’s what we intend to do, make up our own mind about the place.

We stopped at the Gaymarr Centre (at the Mary River Roadhouse) to buy our park passes, $25 each that lasts for 14 days. The lady was very helpful pointing out places of interest and places to stay.

First stop was The Rock hole. Not on the official maps and only marked by a T inspection the first one along the road. It’s a 1km 4wd road in to a spring fed waterfall and waterhole, safe to swim and beautiful clear crystal water. Well worth the detour.

We setup camp at Kambolgie Campground. Bush camping, toilets,  bins, fireplaces, lots of trees, well spaced out sites. Cost $5 pp. We opted for this camping area over the more busy Gunlom managed campground @$10 pp.

We drove the 24kms to Gunlom campground to visit the swimming hole and check the place out. The road is corrugated, dusty and has some sharp dip edges where they have concreted the dips. Gunlom campground is a large open area, no defined sites. They is a section for people who want to use generators. Showers are provided. There is a great day area with green grass, they had the sprinklers on when we were there. It’s a short 200m return wheel chair friendly walk to the large swimming hole. Beautiful clear green water at the base of the high waterfall. The rangers check and clear any salties after every wet season. There are signs up everywhere warning about saltwater crocs. We were told by one couple that here was a fresh water croc in there.

We did the 1km return walk to Murrill Billabong, that wasn’t that exciting. We then did the steep climb, listed as difficult climb to the lookout and rock pools at the top of the waterfall. It was steep, lots of rock hopping, made more difficult with the rocks covered is dust, made them a bit slippery coming back down. The pools were clear and cool, bit too cool but refreshing after the hot climb.

Tell ya there are some people have no common sense. Back at our campsite we have one other camper in the whole campground, a wicked whiz bang van. They could have chosen heaps of other sites, and they all had tables but no they had to choose the one closest to us. Not just the closest they have parked on the closest side, in fact up a slight hill so it puts them even closer. The only thing that stopped them getting closer was some small trees. Like what’s with that.