Day 24/ 25 (June 22nd/ 23rd 2015): Gunlom at Waterfall Creek, Kakadu

Today we moved to our last campsite in Kakadu (for this trip anyway) - to Gunlom. 

This has been a place I have been looking forward to coming to the whole of our excursion in Kakadu NP. 

We have noted in our journey through Kakadu that quite a few of the rivers contain Alligator in their name e.g. South Alligator and East Alligator Rivers. We thought this odd since we do not have Alligators in Australia. The rivers were apparently named way back in history by a young man who had visited the Americas and seen Alligators - he thought our crocodiles were Alligators. Many maps had been drawn up with the rivers so named before the explorer Ludwig Leichhardt (a naturalist) travelling through the area noted that they were actually Crocodiles. They were therefore never re-named.

Gunlom is 39km off the Kakadu Highway. Once you leave the highway you are on a dirt road that although not designated as 4wd is pretty badly corrugated in places - especially the first 7 km-10km. Trying to stay to the prescribed speed limits on this road was troublesome as once you slow down the corrugations have a greater impact on the level of comfort for travelling and the poor ute gets excessively shaken.

We got to camp, set up for our stay, then set about enjoying a nice relaxing lunch. Not long after arriving we noticed that some Red-Tailed Black Cockatoos were settled in the trees near us. Of course they became quite noisy - but are quite beautiful in flight with the red section under their tail feathers.

I set off scrounging around the campsites to see if anyone had left any wood behind. I found one really decent piece but not much else - so we had to look a bit further afield at the back of the campground and found lots of small bits of what I think was "gidgee" branches. It certainly burnt really hot and we managed to produce enough hot coals to be able to cook some snags on my little bbq. They cook just perfectly this way and we were pretty excited to again be having a fire - albeit a small one.

We a also excited to have left the mozzies behind us at Cooinda.

The early afternoon we spent some time at the plunge pool of Gunlom Falls. This is quite a large plunge pool and accessed via a short walk from the campground. It was refreshingly cool water and from the pool you can of course see what is just a trickle of water coming down the face of the waterfall. This waterfall, as does many in Kakadu, dries up pretty much completely in the dry season months.

The bonus with this is that the upper pools are very accessible at this time of year - and it is these I am really excited to be visiting.

At $10per night / adult we thought this was a pretty good NP campground as it had flushing toilets and hot showers and drinking water. The ranger comes around each evening to collect from the campers.

We had noticed around the campground and day use area a lot of, what we thought was, horse poo. When the ranger came the first evening I asked him about this. Yes it was certainly horse poo as he told us there are lots of wild brumbies around this area and they are a nuisance. 

He encouraged us to write and complain about them - he said he would like to move them further into the park away from the campgrounds (as it would make life easier for him) but nothing is being done about it.

Early hours of our first morning here we hear the brumbies moving around the campground - and wake up to see quite a few of them still around the general area and more evidence of their presence everywhere (lots of horse poo) - at least it doesn't seem to make the campground smell.

Up early we get breakfast over and head off with cameras and swimming gear to climb up the steep trail that takes you to the upper pools of the waterfall.

Here are some of the views on our ascent to the pools - 

We were up there by about 8.30am - before many others got there and also before the sun had really hit the pools 

 --  so my first dip in the waters was a very cool one.

Besides not many others being here at this early time - there was the added bonus of the low light on the some of the pools and magnificent reflections.

Up here you have the ultimate "infinity" pool - as from the pool near the top edge of the waterfall you have sweeping views of the Southern Kakadu region.  

A lot of photos taken for promotion of Kakadu have been taken at these pools and a scene in Crocodile Dundee was shot at this very location.

We ended up staying up at the pools about 2 hours - photographing and chatting.

We did lots of dips In quite a few of the pools and by the time we left there was quite a large group of people up there.

I did not want to leave this stunning spot. I would have happily stayed all that day I think and even another night to do the climb up again the next day and enjoy these pools all over again.

This for me has been one of the huge highlights of this trip. It is high up there as one of the best places I have visited in my travels in Australia to date.

And I am feeling pretty relaxed!'