The night before this walk, I had one
of those tortuous dreams that seem to go on and on with no resolution
and strange, unrelated people popping in and out at odd moments. In
this dream, I was planning a sea kayak trip and had great difficulty
getting topographic maps which I eventually procured. Trouble was,
all kinds of people, including my dad (whose been dead almost 30
years), my oldest brother (who would no more paddle a kayak than
climb a mountain) and various other unidentified but bothersome
people kept trying to mark up the maps. I awoke after a bout of
screaming "no one is to touch the maps." Clearly, the fact
that the only map we had for our travels through Kakadu National Park
was a road map was deeply troubling to me. How I longed for a set of
topographic maps of the Northern Territory.
That was the night before the walk, the
day before the walk, we had driven an hour (to cover about 18 km)
down a rough corrugated road to Gunlom campground where Waterfall
Creek falls 70 metres over the escarpment into a deep plunge pool and
eventually meanders out to join the South Alligator River on the low
lands. A steep but substantial track leads up to the top of the
falls and a couple of beautiful clear pools in the small sandstone
gorge. Many out of condition travellers were staggering up this
slope, mostly glad in highly unsuitable thongs (something you wear on
your feet in Australia, thankfully, I could not see their underwear),
luckily, they happily stepped aside to let us past or it would have
been a tedious 70 metre climb.
Above Gunlom Falls
The pools are beautiful, but the walk
seems too short, so after dashing back down for a swim in the plunge
pool at the bottom, we hiked back up again - great consternation from
people that we would actually hike twice up a whole 70 metres, and
went wandering. Fresh from Umbrawarra Gorge, the sensible thing
seemed to be to follow Waterfall Creek east across the plateau. We
did this for about half an hour, but it was on the bushy side, and we
felt closed in under the dense (for these parts) forest. A shady
ledge above the creek offered a good lunch spot and a view to rocky
escarpment on either side. We abandoned our course up the creek and
instead, wandered up rocky slabs and over boulders to the ridge line
above the creek. From the top, we had a good view across Barramundie
Creek to the Arnhem Plateau, but a topographic map, to plan a walk
and identify all the terrain features we could see, would have been
helpful.
Looking towards the Arnhem Land plateau
The next day, we started out
optimistically enough to walk what the National Park literature
describes as an unmarked route that makes a circuit around Kurrindie
and Motor Car Creeks and the South Alligator River. We packed long
pants expecting tall spear grass. The first part of the walk is on a
trail and leads through savannah forest along the northern edge of a
sandstone escarpment. After about 4 km, a side track leads up to a
deep pool at the base of Motor Car Creek falls, now just a trickle
over black cliffs into a deep, dark pool at the base. We were
expecting a long day so did not take the time to swim just walked
back down the side track and changed into long pants as the track
ahead had deteriorated to a small swath through high spear grass. It
is only about 1.5 kilometres along this narrow track to Kurrindie
Creek and a side track, that disappears at a minor tributary drainage
leads part way up to Kurrindie Creek falls. The last bit you must
scramble up big river boulders to another deep plunge pool before
another trickling waterfall. We were hot and bothered by now so we
did have a quick dip in the cool water before walking back to the
"main" track. A few steps further on, and all signs of a
track disappeared.
We pushed through head high spear grass
to Kurrindie Creek and began to follow it downstream, through thick
spinifex, matted spear grass, and spiky sword palms. Progress was
not only slow, but painful and tedious. After a bit, we battled our
way through spear grass out onto some sandstone slabs above the east
side of the creek. "It's all a bit ordinary" we said to
each other. An Australian expression that means it's actually bloody
awful. I spied a strange mushroom shaped sandstone tower above the
river and we decided to head for this eminence for lunch. Much
battling with spear grass followed and we were somewhat relieved to
climb out onto clean sandstone slabs below a big undercut mushroom of
rock. Doug did a few pull-ups to celebrate and we sat down to lunch
in the shade.
Celebratory pull-ups
Once again we got to wondering if it
wasn't better to walk up on the sandstone plateaus rather than down
in the river beds. To the north of us, extensive slabs of sandstone
led up to some small peaks on a plateau above both Motor Car and
Kurrindie Creeks. After lunch, by picking a route on boulders and
slabs, we had a minimum of bush and quickly ended up onto a big flat
open plateau overlooking Kurrindie Creek. We wandered north,
scrambling up and down gullies between sandstone slabs to the
furthest north plateau looking over the South Alligator River and
down to Motor Car Creek. A topographic map would have been great to
have.
Instead of going back the way we had
come, we plotted a route past a small mini escarpment to the left,
and a gentle hillock to the right that, if we passed both and headed
almost due south would allow us to intercept the track. Most of the
way was good travel. We could link together boulders and slabs, and
even a creek bed that ran in the correct direction for a while, but
the last 15 minutes was fairly scratchy. Scrambling down one section
over a shadowy cave, I scared a Barrk (a dark coloured male wallaroo,
apparently fairly rare and infrequently sighted) out from its resting
spot in the shade and it took off showing us it's muscular black body
quite unlike other wallaroos and kangaroos.
Above Kurrindie Creek
The last half hour, and particularly
the last 15 minutes was quite ordinary. We were out in the savannah
grasslands and the spear grass was matted, dense and over my head.
Pushing through, I would collect a big bow wave of snapped off stalks
which I would have to eventually push aside before I began to
accumulate more. When we finally pushed out onto the track, our arms
were scratched and itchy with the spear grass rash.
Spear Grass
We took the time to walk the extra
distance up to Motor Car Falls for a swim in the deep pool before
staggering the last four kilometres back under the baking hot sun. I
saved a few sips of water for the short side walk that led to
Yurmikmik Lookout which we did for completeness. The view was
nowhere near as good as that from our wanderings on the Callanan
Claypan along the sandstone plateaus.
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