Day 62 – Jabiru/Ubirr Rock (Sun June 24^th)

We chilled out at the campsite today, plus had a quick drive into Jabiru for some supplies.

Jabiru was originally built in 1982 as a closed town to house the community living at Jabiru East near the Ranger Uranium Mine. There is a small shopping plaza here that has most of the traveler's needs.  

About lunch time 3 mini buses of school kids arrived and set up camp across from us, which had us thinking about our sunset at Ubirr Rock.  What’s the bet, they will all be there for the sunset with us.

After packing some nibbles we set off for Ubirr Rock, which is about 32km north east of Jabiru. We couldn’t get over the amount of cars and people in the car park when we arrived, including of course the 3 school mini buses.

There is a lot of aboriginal art here, with regular ranger talks in one of the natural aboriginal art galleries. 

We walked up to the top of Ubirr Rock, and took in the beauty until the hoards of people, along with all the school kids arrived.

This was our queue to leave, it was far too crowded for our liking. Damon and I have seen the sunset here 9 years ago, it’s magic! We were lucky enough to be the only ones there, so we kept that image in our minds as we returned to the car.

Not far from Ubirr Rock is the notorious Cahills Crossing which crosses over the East Alligator River, and into Arnhem Land.  Large crocodiles frequent this area, so we went to see if we could spot any. We did see one but he ducked under the surface before I could snap a photo of him.

Cahills Crossing

Walking back to the car from Cahills crossing we could see the sun setting behind some nice looking rocks. So we took our drinks and camembert cheese and watched it go down, just the four of us.

It was then a mad rush back to camp to beat all the school kids to the showers, haha, phew! We made it.

We went to sleep to the howl of dingoes, one sounded like it was just outside our camper. He was most probably on the other side of the fence though. The dingoes are a known pest for the caravan park. We were told not to leave anything outside, as the dingoes may take them, especially things with a scent on them, like shoes!

Damon actually saw one right next to our camper on his way back from the shower this morning, he came through a hole in the fence. The park keepers are forever trying to think of ways to deter them.