Yellow Waters
Tuesday, 4th June 2002

Boat

Yellow Water is a wetlands area where you can do a superb sunrise boat ride along the Yellow Waters Billabong and see heaps of wildlife. We started pre-dawn with mist hanging thickly over the waters pretty pretty. (The seats were damp to start with so take something to sit on). Saw loads of birds and learnt that kookaburras are kingfishers – whistling ducks, darters really close, rainbow bee eaters. Saw loads of habitats including paperbark forest, trees always in water with two sets of roots for wet and dry season water levels. Saw crocs one with a snake in its mouth stop river pandanus – kinds of grass including spear grass.

Nitmiluk

Took in Leliyn (Edith Falls) on the way to Katherine. Pretty really pretty. I also took in a cruise down Nitmiluk Gorge. Once again flying foxes were noisome like babies as I waited for the cruise. The Gorge trip was fairly good – saw more darters (and more flying foxes squabbling in the trees – they strip the trees while waiting for their young to mature) real sense of how old the place was – ages past – like at Zion Canyon the rock is porous and you get water falling from the rock itself that. I had seen the darter or snake neck bird as the anhinga in the States. They like to stand and dry their wings - or warm what they've just eaten.