3rd Day In Kakadu- Saying Farewell to Kakadu.

A magnificent Sunset at the Wetlands Kakadu

A beautiful shot.

                                                    

                                                                         The Whistling Kite.

3^rd Day in Kakadu, well Mark was wanting to do a trip where you have to drive 2hour one way, so 4 hour round trip. All of us, were a bit over the driving so opted to do a tour down at the Yellow Waters wetlands, it was a wild life talk and walk with the Ranger at 8am-10am. We spotted certain birds, the ranger would talk about the aboriginal area we were in and recently someone they know from the area (Aboriginal), had died. The culture is when they die, their name is not spoken about for a year and their name is covered up if for instance it was on a local sign. Other Aboriginals would come and cleanse the area with red ochre and wipe the ochre around trees, posts, signs etc. We learnt this because where we were there was recently a death and the wetlands boardwalk had red ochre on posts etc.  The Ranger started to talk about the bird ‘The Whistling Kite’, as there were a few flying up above. Dylan knew about the ‘Whistling Kite’ or otherwise known to the Aboriginals as ‘The Fire Bird’, the Ranger had started to explain how they get their prey and Dylan said,” Yes I have heard about this”, the Ranger then suggests Dylan tell the story, so he did, in front of the tour group, of Germans, Spainish and Aussie’s. Well ‘The Whistling Kites”, hang around fires and wait for animals to come out so they can prey on them and then they pick up charred sticks and drop them and make another fire and therefore more animals to come out, or for them more food. An extremely proud moment as Dylan spoke about this to the tourists. Wow, he has learnt something on this holiday so far. The tour finishing up at 10am and back to camp, and a morning tea break. Kids had a swim, as it was 28 deg at 12pm. To the Aboriginal Cultural Centre after lunch, which was, only 1 km away, so a non-driving day and a day to relax, was what we all needed. The Cultural centre was interesting and saw some aboriginal art on stone that are being preserved, as the paintings are 5000 years old, I know I couldn’t believe it either. Mark said no, they can’t be, and I said read the sign, yes 5000 years old. Bought some things from the souvenir shop as you do, I can’t help myself. A lovely couple of hours in the sun and pool, you just can’t get the boys out of the pool. We wanted to back down to the Wetlands and see the sunset and that was around 618pm. We headed down around 6.10pm and it was beautiful, what more can I say. A lot of people taking shots down there and even a boat cruise that was coming in were there for the sunset. A lovely way to finish