Jabiru and Arnhem Land Border

Sun 19 April…..Well we have stayed in some places with their fair share of bugs and bitey things but last night was the tops! We had to batten down the hatches to keep the bugs out, spray all over with mossie repellent, spray the inside of the van and put the aircon on full bore. Peter went to put the camera away in it’s case which hangs on the back of the passenger seat, and there was a frog in it! We had every conceivable flying bug you can imagine we even had frog climbing up the windows on the outside. Today we are full of mossie and white ant bites, lumps and dollops of cream everywhere. First thing this morning there was a dingo wandering through the camp, there were several wallabies about and we shared our shower with allsorts of 6 legged things! Well …it is the outback.
We are moving to the furthest point east in Kakadu, a place called Jabiru close to the Arnhem Land Border. This is genuine Aborigine country where they own the land and hunt it using traditional methods. For instance a little plastic explosive to assist with the fishing, and Parker-hale rifle for the kangaroos, none of that boomerang and spear chucking stuff. We drive up country for a while to have a look at Ubir which has a border store and a causeway crossing into Arnhem Land. It’s a lovely river but croc infested, we have a good look and were amazed to see Aboriginal families fishing and swimming on the sandbanks at the side of the river. There are also some white guys fishing on our side of the river. There are lots of Aboriginal rock paintings in Arnhem land, thousands of years old, but you need a permit to go into Arnhem land to go and see them, not only that, as we are still officially in the wet season, because of floods we can’t get in anyway even if we had a 4WD. On the way to Ubir, we had to drive through a couple of floodways but Peter was confident we could do it with his buoyancy aide sat in the navigators seat. ( I didn’t want to put that!) we checked out a couple of 4WD trips but they weren’t what we wanted, so we will move a little further tomorrow on our round trip through Kakadu, and will then look to see what is on offer. Meanwhile, here in Jabiru we have opted for a better quality bush camp. We have found a site that has en-suite it’s pretty much the same as anywhere else except you have your own key, and you don’t share, might even get a better standard of bug later. We already have a frog on the windscreen!