So Wednesday morning was a sleep in morning for
the team, but the Witteveen clan (minus Nic) was up early(ish) and got ready to
head off to Kakadu National Park – exciting! Although we had been in Darwin,
Australia, for a few days we hadn’t had the chance to be tourists so we were
quite happy to head off, even if just for two days. When we booked the Kakadu
tickets the tourist advisor suggested we take a turn in at Fogg Dam for some
good birding. Well Fogg Dam was just so dam fantastic that I had to do a whole
separate blog for those photos – see here.
After Fogg Dam we continued on to Kakadu,
stopping at Bark Hut for a coffee. I need to digress briefly to discuss two
points. Firstly, it is hot. Like. Crazy ridiculous hot. Humid, disgusting,
sweat in the airconned car hot. I though Darwin was hot, but driving towards
Kakadu it just got worse! Secondly, I was educated at the Bark Hut that we were
moving into croc, buff, and barra country. Crocodile, buffalo, aaaaand.. Kookaburra? Barramundi apparently, which is a fish! A very large, good eating
fish, which I regrettably did not sample.
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| Little Corella. These birds sat during the heat of the day in shady trees or on the ground and groaned (or so it sounded) for ages! |
Moving onto Kakadu we discovered there was no
manned entry gate into the park, and there was a large national road running
right through it, used by road trains! Road trains are long trucks, generally
pulling three carriages resulting in the entire vehicle being over 50 m long,
travelling at the max speed limit which is 130 km/h on most Australian main
roads. So entry into, and use of, Kakadu (besides passing through on the main
road) is based on honesty, just hope you don’t get caught by a ranger on patrol
without your entry pass. I do wonder how well it works.
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| Much of where we were travelling through was in the floodplains. |
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| Spot the Wallaby! |
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| Our first wild Wallaby! |
On the way to our accommodation we stopped at
the Mamukala Wetlands for some more birding, before continuing to Anbinik and
our bush bungalow – our bush bungalow which had no aircon! Horrors! But at
least there was a fan! Our nearest neighbours roosted in the trees behind our
bungalow, and were beyond awesome!
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| Magpie Geese. |
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| Plumed Whistling-duck. |
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| Black-winged Stilt. |
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| Magpie Geese. Bottoms up! |
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| Red-kneed Dotterel. |
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| Black-fronted Dotterel. |
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| Comb-crested Jacana. |
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| Australian Pratincole. |
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| Our bush bungalow. |
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| How many bats can you spot? |
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| Black Flying Foxes (Black Fruit Bats). |
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| Double-barred Finch. |
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| Pheasant Coucal. |
