Wine, crocodiles and rock art

It's been another quite busy couple of weeks which is why I've been a bit slack on the blogging. There's now too much to talk about in detail so I'll mention some of the highlights from the last little while here in Australia.

After returning to Perth from our trip up the coast to Coral Bay, we hooked up with my cousin Emma who very kindly allowed us to stay in a holiday home that she was given a free weekend in, south of Perth in the Margaret River region of WA.

Margaret River sits in a section of land that juts out west from the rest of the state and has a climate particularly suited to growing grapes for wine. After our quick few days in Adelaide which didn't permit us a stay in the famous Barossa Valley of South Australia (wine buffs will know it), we were looking forward to spending some time in the Margaret River region, a lesser known but no less enticing wine-producing region. Whilst the hot climate of the Barossa Valley produces predominantly Shiraz labelled wines such as those by Wolf Blass and Jacob's Creek, Margaret River's climate is more suited to, amongst others, Cabernet and Merlot grapes.

The three of us spent a really enjoyable weekend chatting, cooking, drinking wine and beer, admiring the rocky coastline and tasting wine, chocolate and cheese. It was the first time that I had experienced wine tasting and it was the first time I can honestly say I tasted big difference between different wines. It was educational, but great fun too. Emma has one or two photos of us wine tasting on her blog. We'll definitely be looking out for MR wines when we get back to the UK. You may have heard of Leeuwin Estate wines, and a large number of other wineries export their liquid back to the UK, so look out for it.

After catching a lift back to Perth with cousin Emma, girlfriend Emma and I flew to Darwin, where over the last few days we've been exploring nearby Kakadu National Park. Kakadu is Australia's largest National Park (which is saying something), and it is also a World Heritage Site, which gives you an idea that it a Pretty Cool Place, with capital Ps and a C.



Kakadu is an area that the Aborigines have been living in for thousands of years. Literally thousands - at least 20,000. I think that is astonishing. That is long before any of the history you learn about at school - several times as long ago as the Ancient Greeks and Egyptians. We learnt a lot about Aboriginal culture and tried to imagine what it must have been like for the indigenous people when the White Man came and overran their land. The most poignant reminder of the clash between Aboriginal and Western cultures is right in front of you every time you walk down the main street in Darwin. The indigenous people have never properly fit in with the new society and are reduced to begging on the pavements. It's sad evidence of how mistreated they have been, not only during the initial wave of European settlement in Australia, but as recently as the 1970s, at which time they still did not have the same rights as the whites.

The Aboriginal culture in Kakadu manifests itself in the rock art that is visible at many sites around the park. These are thousands of years old and it is like stepping back into a completely different era when you are faced with examples of these drawings. In the example below, the skeletal figure in the top right is lightning man, one of the protagonists in the Aboriginal Creation Period. He now resides at one of the many 'Dreaming Places' in the rock nearby. These sites are sacred to Aboriginals and it is important that they are not disturbed by outsiders.





Kakadu is also home to amazing natural beauty, and one of the habitats, the wetlands, are home to crocodiles! We observed one crocodile basking under a tree trunk, but all other efforts at croc spotting turned out to be fruitless. Instead, we saw many species of birds.



After hitch hiking around Kakadu for a few days we returned to Darwin yesterday, and now we are biding time before going to the airport this evening for our flight to Indonesia. I'd better start learning some Indonesian phrases then!