At the northeast end of Kakadu National
Park, bordering Arnhem Land which is reached by crossing the inimical
ford across the East Alligator River at Cahills Crossing is Ubirr.
What makes Ubirr popular with the tourists are the fantastic view
across the Nadab floodplains of the East Alligator River from the top
of Ubirr, the outstanding examples of indigenous art, and the
possibility of spotting a "saltie" from the viewing
platform at Cahills Crossing.
Nadab Floodplain
We arrived at Merl campground in the
early afternoon. Like all the facilities in Kakadu, the campground
has gone past tired and is now well into decrepitude. In the
bathroom block, water leaks from pipes in the roof and has been
"mended" with adhesive tape; and mended about as well as a
water pipe under pressure would be fixed by adhesive tape from your
local newsagents. The toilets are either out of order, or so full of
spider webs that you are afraid to sit down. This is the country,
after all, where 90% (or some ridiculously high number) of the worlds
most poisonous insects are endemic, so, unless a spider can be
conclusively identified as a harmless Daddy Long Legs, it seems wise
to be suspicious. This is all a real shame as the campground is
otherwise very nice with big private sites each with a table (and a
fire pit, more is the pity). The mosquitoes, once the sun goes down
are horrendous, but this is Kakadu, and to expect anything else would
be foolish.
Long necked turtle
We had time to wander, on a poorly
marked track out to Cahills Crossing from the campground where the
tide was rushing out over the crossing and a bunch of indigenous folk
were fishing from a rapidly rising sandbar in the river. The East
Alligator River is silty silver with mud as it rushes 5 km upstream
from the weir, which is itself 70 km upstream from the Timor Sea.
The tides here average about 7 metres - a lot of water to move up and
down four times a day.
Looking towards Arnhem Land
At 4.00 pm, we went up to the Ubirr art
site as one of Njanjma (indigenous) Rangers was giving an evening
talk. I imagine it is pretty hard for black fellas, subject to
intense discrimination across the country, to give a two hour talk to
a white mob, but this young man managed very well. He told Dreamtime
stories, explained the rock art, and talked about how the indigenous
population gathered and hunted food across the Kakadu area before the
influx of white man. The art at Ubirr is rich and complex. In some
areas, up to twelve layers of paintings overlay one another. Most is
on low easy to reach sections of the cave walls, but, one intriguing
and intricate drawing of sorcery figures is high up on the roof
overhead. The aborigines believe Mimi spirits, who are tall and
thin, lifted the rocks down, painted the figures and then set them
back up again. Standing atop Ubirr with the verdant green wetlands
spread out below, jagged sandstone towers on the horizon, ungainly
Jabiru launching into elegant flight, prehistoric reptiles preying in
the silty waters of the tidal river, and the ever present rowdy call
of the cockatoo ringing in the air, it is easy to believe in mythical
beings.
Mimi spirit figures
The contemplative nature of the sunset
moment, was, however, spoilt for me when I turned around and
confronted a dozen out of shape white fellas unselfconsciously
snapping "selfies" of themselves seemingly ignorant of the
magnificence of their surroundings. Have we always been so
absorbingly self-obsessed or has our too comfortable life divorced
from the natural world and lost in crowded cities promulgated the me
generation? Would we still be drawn to cave paintings from a lost
era if they featured exclusively realistic self-portraits of the
artists instead of communicating Dreamtime stories of creation and
emblematic representations of mythical spirit creators? Perhaps, it
is just another indicator of our crackbook culture wherein, if we
don't photograph it, post it, brag about it, and, most importantly,
get credit for it (in the form of "likes" and "thumbs
up") it never happened.
No comments:
Post a Comment