Saturday, October 15, 2005

KAKA-U??? No, mate. It's KAKADU!!!!

After our wonderful day at Nitmiluk, we headed east towards Katherine where we stopped in for a few essentials (food, alcohol, camping gear, internet, civilization???) and again, we began our journey northward. Our next destination was Kakadu National Park (200Km east of Darwin) and I was incredibly stoked to experience this park as soooo many people I had met so far on my travels, had spoken about it with high regards. But truthfully, I wasn’t sure what to expect other than the great aboriginal rock-art (yay!!! I love EVERYTHING aborigine!!!!).

Plus, from a completely different perspective of appreciation for a National Park, I had it in my head (or in my legs) that I was going to cycle a great deal through this park if the hills didn’t kill me first…and it turns out, it was the GREATEST place on earth to cycle as it was flat-as-flat-can-be (with a few bouts with head-winds but nothing to keep me from moving forward, albeit slowly)!! So during the 3 days we spent in the park, I cycled about 30-40Km every morning between the hours of 7-10am (the increasing temperatures as we moved further and further north, were really starting to dictate our traveling/activity schedules)…and I was LOVING IT!!!

[on a side note: for a brief 7 days, I was having the worst of luck with my bike and my clip-in shoes. I fell 4 days in a row, three times at a stand-still while one-shoe was still half-clipped in and once I seriously crashed into a curb because I was completely sleep-deprived and not paying attention to the nonsensical curb right before a round-about and ended up breaking my head-light, scratching up the bike, flying over the handle-bars and landing somehow on my two-hands and two feet??!?! and soon-thereafter, with an ENORMOUS bruise on my thigh that lasted almost a full-week and looked like I was getting a “good-beating back at the house”!! So then for a few days, Laurie and I were on a no-fall-for-FUJ campaign which seems to have taken effect quite nicely—knock on ROCK???]

In any case, this blog is going to consist mostly of photos as I have soooooo many to share of KAKADU NATIONAL PARK. The first series will be of overall picturesque and note-worthy photos: HIGHLIGHTS, the second will be of aboriginal rock-art (as I am totally fascinated by rock-art and the whole aboriginal culture): Dreamtime, and finally, the last series will be of sunset at Ubirr—an incredible section of the park which is impassable after the wet-season begins as all the road flood (most of Northern Australia is impassable after the “build-up” and all the torrential rainfall): sunset at Ubirr.

But before I begin, I’d just like to give a little more meaning to some of the photos by sharing some of my understandings of the aboriginal core belief-systems and their history. Kakadu National Park has been named a World Heritage area for its outstanding cultural and natural treasures. The name Kakadu is based on the Gagadju aboriginal language that is commonly spoken by the area aborigines who own the land and lease it back to the Government for National Park use. The park itself includes one of the finest and most extensive collections of rock art in the world, attesting to the Aboriginal people’s long association with the land. It embraces some amazing scenery from rugged sandstone escarpments, to woodlands, to vast wetlands, a large tropical river and some really incredible examples of the diverse habitats that allow for the amazing wild life that abounds in the “Top End” of this continent. Aside from the beauty of the park itself, what is most striking about the rock-art that is found in so many places around the park, is that some of it is over 6-7 thousand years old and yet still remains clearly visible on the walls of some of these rock-walls. The art depicts aboriginal history, storytelling, philosophies and a clear record of life and life-style as written language has mostly been non-existent in this culture.
What I find so intriguing about the richness of their history and belief-system, although it varies of course between tribes and across regions and there is no one single-belief-system whatsoever, but that there is a pervasive theme across the aboriginal cultures which accepts a story about “life” and how it cycles and that there is something called the dreamtime which depicts a “way in which the world came about” and how humans have a part in this dreamtime and that there is good and not-so-good behavior that affects the rhythm and dynamics of the dreamtime. And though I am only giving you a very rough sketch of this “story” as I understand it (so very little still), it really paints a beautiful picture which begins with the Rainbow Serpent—one of the most powerful ancestors of the Dreamtime that first visited the world after the “First people” created the landscape and all that it contains.
In the enormous numbers of rock-art that I saw (and took photos of), there were countless representations of the Rainbow Serpent as well as other significant spirits that played a part in the aboriginal way-of-life, from “laws” of the dreamtime to daily activities, to successful-hunts, to food menus, to celebrations, to erotic art and animals and dancing…the rock-art was beautiful and stunning!!! And on many levels, a much better way to communicate amongst themselves and between tribes rather than through the use of written language where there always comes a point of debate based on semantics or proper use of words and/or style. Here, things just are, and that’s how it was…

Enjoy!!

Highlights:



Beware of the Crocodile…





Anbangbang (also known as Nourlangie Rock)






Termite mounds speckling graveyard fields


Kakadu landscape (with controlled bush-fires at a distance):





ROCK ART:

The rainbow serpent:





Here are the aboriginal laws:






They love their wallabies (and they eat them too!):




Here fishies fishies fishies fishies:




They love their fish: Barramundi art





Erotic Art:





They love to dance!!!



Nabulwinjbulwinj:



The lightning man:



SUNSET OVER UBIRR:



On this particular day, controlled bush-fires were being conducted and so the sunset was particularly stunning for its unusual colors and filtering of the sun as it set over the horizon…






A beautiful landscape captured a most unique end-of-the-day scenery:




Stunning…absolutely stunning!!!





And finally, the grande finale for my pictures of KAKADU!!! How amazing is this photo??? I can’t even think of it being taken here on this planet!!!

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