Day 10: The Ghan/Uluru/ Darwin.

I forgot to show you this photo yesterday! This is the sad sight that greeted me when we emerged from the dining car on The Ghan after dinner. It was 9:15. Not a soul to be seen.

This is what you get when you go for a train ride with old people. They go to bed at a sensible hour…

This night’s sleep was a lot better than my first on the Ghan. The next morning, the consensus was the same. We were breakfasted and dressed early, because at 9 AM, the train stopped at the famous Katherine Gorge.
There were around 5 activities on offer, and I had chosen the boat ride and rock art tour.

I didn’t realise how much rock art I was going to see in Kakadu. I should probably have chosen a slightly different tour. But a boat trip down the gorge is practically mandatory for first time visitors here, so I was happy.

There are actually 13 gorges, one right after the other. They were formed when, during the massive tectonic collision that was going on in Central Australia a few million years ago “ on a Wednesday afternoon at 4o’clock”, a split formed.

Katherine Gorge is that split.

Over the aeons, water collected in the sandstone and then voila! Here we are.

We’ve entered into crocodile country.
Absolutely no swimming in the river. No putting hands, feet ( or any other appendages, presumably) over the boat’s edge into the water.
Freshwater crocodiles are dangerous.
Saltwater crocs make the freshies look cute and cuddly. Everywhere I went on the rest of this trip, the Salties were spoken of with the greatest respect. No one wants to mess with them.

This little red float is a tool the rangers use to check for Salties in the area. Saltwater crocodiles are much bigger than the Freshies and are also very curious. Red and yellow are also their favourite colours. They’ll swim along, see this and bite it.
when the rangers see the bite marks, they know there’s a Saltie in the system. This is s freshwater system and the Salties bugger things up for the Freshies, so the rangers will put traps out for the Saltie, and relocate it once it’s caught.

Here’s the gap of the gorge. Our boat only travelled through the first gorge, because it was here that we jumped off to see the rock art.

This silvery leafed tree is used for many things out here.

Paperbark bedding, using the bark to wrap food in, to cook meat with the leaves because the oils in the leaves make the meat taste better. The leaves are also antiseptic, like Vics Vapour Rub. Making a smoky fire with the leaves also discourages mozzies.

Also, there’s some rock art on the wall behind it.

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Just to prove that I’m actually here.

By the way, remember that care package the tour company sent? I haven’t used the towel yet, but the hat and drink bottle? I’m using them every day.

This red painting is around 10,000 years old.
It shows a Mimi spirit. Colin told us about them at Uluru. They are shape shifters and can shrink to the size of a person, or get as big as a mountain. They are unpredictable, and can be either good or bad.

Our guide said, “We know it’s a Mimi spirit because it has 7 fingers and toes and his ears pointing down.”

The paintings in an area are usually there to show other people what resources are in the area for them to eat. So there’s a Rock Wallaby Joey, and an extinct animal.

The two stick figures right at the top are a man and a woman. The fainter one is a woman carrying a dilly bag. The brighter one is the man, carrying a Woomera ( spear thrower.)

The oldest rock paintings are red. Later another 3 colours came in, as people learned their craft.

This is the same painting, but this time, look at the yellow down to the bottom right. This is of a European man.

Next, we moved across to a cave. It has quite a bit of art on the rocks outside. The horizontal lines painting is a dugout canoe. Clearly, there are trees in the area which are good for this.

Unless a painting is of a creation spirit – which are left untouched out of respect – it was perfectly ok to draw over previous paintings. I suppose it makes sense to keep the information about an area current, especially if it’s about survival.

“Our styles have the pre-period which is 6000 to 20,000+ years old, said our guide. “You find a lot of paintings of large spirit and large animals. Back down there, the big Mimi spirit and big rock Wallaroo is 10,000 years old. Next period is 6000 to 2000 years old. This is where the x-ray style comes in, so if you go up in the Kakadu National Park, there’s a lot of paintings of like fish and stuff, and they have all the skeleton of it, all the guts and stuff. The x-ray style first came in around 6,000 to 2,000 years ago.”

“Obviously, the contact period which is 300 to 50 years old. We have paintings of ships, horses, guns, men, smoking cigars and wearing wide brim hats, things like that. After this, the people learned to paint on paper.”

“You also get a lot of paintings of handprints. Around here there are handprints all over the shop. The earliest handprints style as you would make the paint, put your hand in the paint and then place it on the rock, “ our guide said. “That was the first style. The second style was that you would get the paint, put your hand on the rock and then blow the paint out around it. Here in the National Park you’ll find a lot of handprints like that.”

Underneath the cave lip, there’s a streak of Orange. Do you see it?

It’s a Rainbow Snake. This is a creation spirit and has never been painted over.

The Rainbow Serpent is the protector of the land, its people, and the source of all life. However, the Rainbow Serpent can also be a destructive force if it is not properly respected. In times of anger or rage it causes storms and floods to act as punishment against those who disobey the laws.

As the story of the Rainbow Snake was being told, I looked back across where we’d come.
It was so beautiful.

You can see the layers of sediment where the ground was pushed up. They say that initially, these mountains were as tall as the Himalayas. But millions of years of erosion have worn them right down.

This is a crocodile trap. Crocodiles are most active at night, so before dusk, the rangers will put a feral pig or buffalo here. By morning, hopefully the Saltie has taken the bait and can be rehomed.

The Leichhardt tree has larger leaves than most and so is easy to spot. They have great timber for dugout canoes.

The Pandanas trees are very useful. The indigenous people strip the leaves for their tough fibres that can be made into string. They are fairly shallow-rooted, so whenever you see one, you know that water is around.Dig a metre or two straight down and you’ll find it.

I left with a profound respect for how people were able to make their lives for over 60,000 years in such a tough environment. I’ve only scratched the surface of what our guide told us about the art and how they are able to use the plants and animals around them for so many different things.

Then it was back to The Ghan for the final leg of my journey. This is the view from the window once we pulled out of Katherine.

I may have had a couple of gin and tonics with lunch. I got back to my room and the bed had been put back in the wall and the seats and table were back.

So I grabbed a pillow, curled myself into an ‘L’ shape with my feet up on the wall, and slept for a couple of hours.

Once we arrived in Darwin, I checked in, then had dinner here at the Irish pub. Love the name!

Tomorrow is the Kakadu and Arnhem Land leg of the trip.

(Send Jeffrey good vibes. I’m a few days ahead of this post. Last night I got back into internet range and found that Jeff isn’t doing very well.)

Dad Joke of the day:

I asked my Mexican neighbor why he pushed his wife in front of a train

He said “Tequila”.