Three hours drive from Darwin and yet it feels like a million miles from anywhere. Kakadu National Park covers an area of 20,000 square kilometres and Aboriginal people have inhabited this area for more than 65,000 years. The park is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site for both cultural and natural values and after exploring the area for the last few days, it’s clear to see why.

Clearly with the size of this park, a few days will never do the area justice and it feels like we can only scratch the surface. Basing ourselves in the north of the park, in the township of Jabiru, we find ourselves on one of the largest caravan parks we have found in a long time. Large, but super quiet and everyone still had that feeling of space around them. The camp sites are all set up in a circular pattern, forming concentric rings around the pool. Unlike most caravan parks, this place doesn’t take bookings and you just turn up, pay your money and then go and chose any site you like. It’s a great approach but does lead to aimless driving around in circles trying to decide where to set up – a bit like when you are in an empty carpark and can’t decide which spot to take! Anyway… we eventually agreed upon a site to set up our 83rd camp of this adventure.

We decided to take a late afternoon drive out to Ubirr to check out the Aboriginal artwork and watch sunset. Ubirr is in the East Alligator region of the park and is one of the key reasons for the World Heritage listing for cultural values, being host to some pretty spectacular rock art. When we have seen rock art before, it has usually been faded or half shapes trying to work out the patterns. Here we could easily see the shapes of barramundi fish, long neck turtles, kangaroos and even a thylacine! It was pretty cool to see the shapes and imagine them being painted so long ago and the stories they hold.

Looking to the north, across the wetland area from Ubirr and towards Arnhem Land, we could see the start of a bushfire in the distance.

Less than an hour later, the fire had really spread and you could even see the flames. The role that fire plays in regeneration is well understood by Aboriginal people and traditional burning methods are still used throughout the park to maintain the landscape.

Ubirr was a pretty special stop on our journey and an incredible place to watch the sunset on another day…

Feeling inspired after our viewings of the rock art at Ubirr, the next morning we joined a session in Aboriginal painting at the local ranger station.

A few hours later we had satisfied our ‘inner artists’ and created a whole new gallery of art work for the caravan!

Afternoon (and hottest part of the day) was dedicated to catching up on school work and admin in the air con before we ventured back out towards sunset to check out the billabong at Yellow Waters on a river cruise. Such an awesome spot and a pretty special place for sunset…

There is no doubt that the scale of Kakadu makes it impossible to see it all. We focused our efforts on the accessible northern portions of the park but there is so much left unseen.

On our drive south towards Katherine we stopped at Maguk for a final walk in the National Park and perhaps we had saved the best for last…

Kakadu has been an amazing adventure and wonderful way to restart our Great Australian adventure. Tonight we find ourselves back in Katherine before we head south tomorrow to Mataranka. The journey continues…