Round Australia Bike Ride - Day 057 - Cooinda

Day:  057

Date: Thursday, 27 August 2020

Start:  Cooinda (Kakadu National Park)

Finish:  Cooinda (Kakadu National Park)

Daily Kilometres:  0 (click here for Julie's Strava and photos of our walk, and here for Julie's Strava and photos of our cruise)

Total Kilometres:  5826

Weather:  Hot, sunny and windy

Accommodation:  Tent

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Peanut butter & Ryvita

  Lunch:  Trail mix

  Dinner:  Chicken roll, lasagne, ice cream

Aches:  Nothing significant

Highlight:  Difficult to choose, but possibly seeing a 4+ metre crocodile resting on the bank with what looked like the remains of a young bullock in its mouth.

Lowlight:  None really.

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

Last night, Julie was chatting with some ladies in the camp kitchen/laundry about our plans in Kakadu, and soon afterwards we were generously invited to join them - Fiona, Elaine and Kelly - on their 4WD trip to the remote Jim Jim Falls today.  They are on a week's vacation from their jobs in Darwin.  Our original plan had been to lounge around the campground until our booked Yellow Water sunset cruise at 4:30pm, so the chance to instead spend the day visiting one of Kakadu's big attractions was too good to pass up.  (I had tried, a week ago, to book a commercial 4WD tour that included Jim Jim Falls, but they have ceased operation during the pandemic.)

We met them at their cabin at 7am and set off on the 1.5 hour drive (during which we saw two dingos), much of it on rough unsealed road and track to the JIm Jim Falls carpark, from where we hiked/scrambled into the magnificent gorge through a boulder-filled rainforest.  Sheer cliffs towered high above the gorge catching the early sunlight but where we hiked remained in shadow.  It took nearly an hour to reach the plunge pool, about 100m across and bordered by sheer cliffs on three sides.  We were dwarfed and awed by our surroundings, thinking about how ancient this place must be and wondering what it must be like during the wet season when water would be thundering from high above down into the pool.  The water was clear, deep and inviting, and eventually we all took the plunge, despite it only being about 9:30am, and the sunlight still absent.  It was cold, but not freezing, and it was exhilarating to swim out and look up.

After our swim, we rock-scrambled back up the gorge to another pool bordered on one side by a sunlit and warm beach backed by cliffs which supplied a small amount of shade. We hung out there for another hour or so, sunbaking, chatting, swimming in the beautiful water, and trying not to burn our feet on what had become very hot sand.  It was idyllic.  Eventually, it was time to leave and after hiking back to the car, our new friends delivered us back to the campground soon after 2pm.

After buying some food for dinner and storing it in the camp kitchen fridge, we relaxed for an hour or so, then caught a shuttle bus a short distance to the dock for our sunset Yellow Water cruise which toured the wetlands around the confluence of Jim Jim Creek and the (misnamed) South Alligator River.  It's hard to describe how good the cruise was (or how many pictures we took!).  We saw plenty of crocodiles, buffalo, wallabies, wild boar, and a fantastic range of birdlife and vegetation, along with an incredible sunset.

We got back to the campground at 7pm, enjoyed a late microwaved dinner, and after a shower got to bed around 9pm after an excellent day.