Nourlangie Rock

We spent our second day in Kakadu at Nourlangie Rock, the other major area of Aboriginal rock art in the park. Nourlangie Rock is a large plateau with a couple of rock art sites at its base, and we decided the best way to explore it would be to take the 12km Barrk bush walk, which would take us past the main gallery, up and across the plateau, down the other side to another gallery, and around to the start point. The signs for the walk warned that you should allow 6-8 hours to complete it, which seemed a bit excessive for 12km, but we had packed a lunch and weren't too worried about it. There was some scrambling over rocks and such, but the real challenge became simply finding the trail, since occasionally it was... rather faint. At times we were scanning the trees for the little reflective arrows placed here and there along the path, because the trail itself was completely invisible.

The figure to the right is Lightening Man, responsible for the violent wet season storms.




This is Nabulwinjbulwinj, a dangerous spirit who "eats females after killing them by striking them with a yam."




Yep, that's the trail. And if you are wondering about snakes, we did see one on this day... but it ran away before we could get a look at it. Australian snakes seem to be very shy.




This is how the top of the plateau looked.





There had been a fire in the area recently... so recently that some of it was still smoldering. By the time we finished the hike our legs were black with ash.




We had a nice picnic of sandwiches we picked up that morning from the bakery in Jabiru.






The views from the top of the rock were awesome. Nary a road, building, or power line to be seen.