Nourlangie Art Sites and Jabiru NT

Here is the second part of the 17th's trip. After the sumptuous breakfast we headed off for Jabiru, but along the way we drove 12 Kms off the highway (good sealed road all the way) to a place called Nourlangie where there are well accessible aboriginal rock art caves (more like overhangs, but cooler inside than out, where the aboriginals used to come to keep cool). 

Nourlangie Art Sites

It's was only a 1.2 km walk around these overhangs, but there were rock painting everywhere, fenced off but close enough to see and photograph. One area was completed barred to the public because it was a narrow passageway between two overhangs and what paintings we could see had obviously been disturbed by human interference. However we did see lots of paintings, many unexplainable to us - there were some signs giving some details and they did advertise times when a ranger would be there to do a guided walk, but the next one we could have gone on was almost three hours away, so we opted out. Some of the paintings were quite explicit. It was interesting to note that one of the signs mentioned that the god of these local tribes came from the north with his wives (just where folk would have come from after the Tower of Babel). 

Censored ?

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Kangaroo hunt

Aboriginal Rock paintings

Modern Art

Look at that!

   We then drove onto Jabiru to one of the best Caravan Parks to which we have ever been. It was set out (something like Tanilba) in circles with a huge swimming pool in the centre (which we immediately took advantage) and most of the sites were drive through - no backing up, not seeing where you are and wives getting upset because you can't understand what she means when she points left and you think you should be going right). 

 Jabiru is only a small settlement with a small shopping centre, some specialty shops, police station with court house, post office and several other Govt. buildings and a Westpac Bank. The main Supermarket was smaller than Tanilba's, but it sold almost everything - food and smallgoods (of course), washing machines, fridges etc., souvenirs, fishing & camping gear and almost anything you could want. According to the map of Jabiru there looks to be two residential areas with about a dozen streets each most being cul de sacs. 

We didn't do anything special there, except a bit of shopping and then left early this morning (18th May) for Darwin. On our way here we saw several dingo (they call them wild dogs here), those that were the proper dingo colour looked well fed and healthy, but one black one we saw was quite emancipated. We were told at the caravan park not to leave any shoes or things outside the caravan at night because the wild dogs do roam and will take anything they can find. 

Jabiru Town Map

Mosaic outside Council Offices

 Just found a Baptist Church on the internet with a 9am start time, so we'll go and suss them out tomorrow.