Nourlangi Rock, Kakadu NP

We have now spent five days in Kakadu National Park spending two nights at
Merle Camp, then one night at Muriella camp and a further two nights at
Madugal camp. These are all managed by the rangers and offer unpowered
sites with excellent toilet and shower facilities powered by solar. They
are popular camping areas as they are closest to the various gorges and
falls etc.

While at Muriella we visited Nourlangi Rock. This is a large rock which
seems to appear without the normal gorge around it. The rock has been an
Aboriginal shelter for thousands of years. We particularly wanted to visit
the Aboriginal shelter which also contains a significant amount of art. We
were fortunate to arrive at the main shelter just as the ranger was giving a
talk explaining the various paintings and traditions. The interesting fact
about the painting of the kangaroo is that this helps to age the painting as
it is known that there have not been any kangaroo in Kakadu National Park
for over 350 years.

The walk was not very long and although commenced with a series of steps was
relatively easy after that. Connor was keen to walk to the rim of the rock
so headed off along the track but obviously took a wrong turning somewhere
along the way and met us back at the ranger walk. At least there was no
difficulty in meeting up with him!

It is the height of the tourist season early in the dry so there are plenty
of visitors about. We are often amazed at just where some of the overseas
tourists head off to in their Britz or Apollo campers. They certainly cram
a lot of sightseeing into a short time and often they arrive into the camp
grounds very late in the day, after dark, and head off before I am out of
bed in the morning.