Kakadu Culture Camp is one of the park’s most popular Aboriginal tours – visitors rave about their safari camp experience. Guests get to know the Hunter family during their stay, enjoying luxury camping, bush tucker, campfire yarns and night time billabong tours. Seasonal Ranger Melissa was keen to experience it for herself.
A Mertens water monitor suns itself at Kakadu National Park
Joining the Hunter family, proprietors of Kakadu Culture Camp, on a night cruise on Djarradjin Billabong (Muirella Park) was just wonderful.
Fred, Jenny, Dell and Douglas were all born and bred at Madjinbardi (Mudginberri Buffalo Station) on the edge of the Magela wetlands in what was later to become Kakadu National Park. During the wet season the family live at their outstation on the Bowali Creek in central Kakadu. In the dry season they move to Djarradjin to operate the culture camp where visitors share their culture and traditional heritage.
After learning about crocs, traditional basket weaving, Bininj bush tucker and how to throw a spear, we ventured out onto the water, where we spotted beautiful sacred and azure kingfishers, a pair of white-bellied sea-eagles and a juvenile estuarine croc playing hide and seek!
Kakadu keeps me in constant anticipation – never quite sure what little secret it may reveal next. Like the crimson finches I saw building a nest in the stalks of a pandanus plant on the walk into Ubirr, or the Mertens water monitor that emerged from the beach pool at Jim Jim Falls with a fish in its mouth! I can’t wait to see what else is in store.
Melissa, Seasonal ranger, Kakadu National Park
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Australia Gift Shop at http://www.australiagift.net has a painting by Simon Badari, an Aboriginal artist of Gunbalanya / Oenpelli, an Aboriginal community on the eastern border of Kakadu National Park. An image of this beautiful Aboriginal art canvas of a magpie goose can be viewed at http://www.australiagift.net/australia/aboriginal-art-paintings.asp .
Thanks for the info – and thanks for reading!