The Rock Pools at Gunlom

This morning started very early with max waking up feeling crook. I think it was purely heat stress as I am not convinced he is drinking enough no matter how much I try and force him. Maybe after this it will sink in! His reticence to drink a lot of water is intriguing given how proud he had been of how much he drank during our travels prior to Liz and Harry going home. I am wondering if there was an element of competition in this previously and now that Harry isn’t here it has ceased to be such a focus.
Anyway, after a slow start we headed of to the nearby waterfall. Initially we wandered over to the plunge pool, which was only a couple of hundred metres from the campsite, however I felt we were better off working up a bit of a sweat before a swim (and was hoping to find something nicer than the plunge pool as it looked a bit manky (word specially for you Liz) and green and coerced Max into climbing to the top of the waterfall with me.
For all that he wasn’t happy with the initial idea he ended up being very pleased as the rock pools at the top were by far the nicest swimming spot we have found in the Kakadu. While there another family joined us with two daughters – one older and one younger than Max. They were on there way from the Gold Coast to Margaret River to take up a new work direction and it turned out that like Liz and I they had initially met in Margaret River, so we spent a couple of hours chatting and messing around in the pools.

Late in the afternoon we went to a meeting point for a ranger guided tour out to the river – in the opposite direction to the falls, however when we got there we were told that the tour actually ran on Tuesday evenings and all the brochures and posters advertising it were incorrect. As far as I was concerned it would have been more appropriate to change the day of the tour, especially considering there were a large number of posters in the park itself advertising it for 5pm on Wednesdays.
Max and I did the actual walk anyway but I an sure we would have learnt more if we had been part of the tour – especially frustrating as we were there on the Tuesday and would have done it then if they had fixed the posters around the campsite!
Tomorrow it is time to leave the Kakadu, with our current plan being to head for Mataranka and the hot springs – although I will have to see what I can do about another tyre when we reach Katherine first.