The Nomadic Explorers | Australian Travel Blog

Every year in March melbournians can enjoy vintage machinery in action. Huge steam ploughing engines and tiny models, steam vehicles, a Sherman tank, industrial steam and diesel engines, old farm engines and machinery, miniature railway with rides for the kids, earthmoving machinery, early road making equipment, vintage cars and much more are available at the Steamfest in the National Steam Centre, Scoresby.

The exhibition was very interesting, as almost all the engines were operational and were demonstrating in action as in their working days.

We are back in Melbourne. Darwin travel notes are finished. It is time to finish other autumn travel descriptions. Today's topic is kite festival in Rosebud. The Rosebud Kite Festival in Mornington Peninsula is an extraordinary kite flying fiesta that celebrates the art of the kite every autumn. At a beautiful location on the rosebud foreshore, kite flyers from all persuasions were gracing the skies with their colourful creations. 

Majority of activities was taking place on Sunday, but as Sunday is always a busy day for us, we went to the festival on Saturday. We were able to see how some of the super-sized maxi-Kites, stunt kites and single-line kites were flying.

Today is the last day of our Top End Trip. We are finally got back to Darwin after 5 days trip through Litchfield, Nitmiluk and Kakadu National Parks. Everyone is a little bit tired, so we decided to spend the day in the relaxed manner.

We went to the Australian Aviation Heritage Centre, the George Brown Darwin Botanic Gardens, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory and, at the end of the day, to the safe swimming beach at Darwin Waterfront.

We are much closer to Darwin having only two places to visit in our list: Window on the Wetlands Visitor Centre and Fogg Dam Conservation Reserve. Both of them are located not far away from the Adelaide River and several jumping crocodile cruises, and are worth a visit.

Today is the fifths day of our Top End journey and we are going back to Darwin. Yesterday we watched beautiful sunset at Nadab Lookout, Ubirr, and had a fight with myriads of mosquitoes at Merl campground.

We are only 300kms from Darwin (close enough!), so we have plenty of time to visit most of places that we are interested in. Today we are going to see Mamukala Wetlands in Kakadu National Park, Window on the Wetlands Visitor Centre and Fogg Dam near Darwin.

Initially we had a plan to spend a night in Jabiru - a small city in the middle of Kakadu National Park, but after we checked the road status at Bowali Visitor Centre we found that the road to Ubirr is open (it was closed when we were in Darwin). We decided to go to Ubirr to watch the sunset and listen to a ranger talk.

The sunset at Nadab Lookout, Ubirr, was one of the most remarkable sunsets I’ve ever seen.

Well and truly satisfied with views from Yellow Water Billabong in the Kakadu National Park, we went further to learn more about aboriginal culture. We made a stop at Warradjan Aboriginal Cultural Centre, which is not far away from Cooinda. The centre’s large display, developed by Bininj/Mungguy, provides detailed information about Aboriginal culture in Kakadu. It is well set up, and cost nothing to browse through (and it is cool inside!). Next stop was at Nourlangie region, where we planned to look at Nanguluwur Rock Art Site and Anbangbang Gallery.

The locals talk about “Litchfield-do” and “Kaka-don’t”, which means: “Kakadu National Park is not worth going. Overrated. Go to Litchfield. That's much better”. Is it? That's the wrong question to ask. The Kakadu and Litchfield national parks are very different, but the difference is not in the quality, it's in the size. Neither is "better". Kakadu is simply a lot bigger. Keeping that in mind, we decided to spent at least 3 nights in Kakadu National Park to look at aboriginal paintings, walk some trails and, of course, watch the sunrise at Yellow Water Billabong.

The other part of Nitmiluk National Park we wanted to explore was Leliyn (Edith Falls). Edith Falls is a series of falls that crash down the surrounding cliff sides and into the one large pool. The falls are located about a one hour drive north from Katherine and should definitely be included in any trip to visit the Katherine region.

We spent two fantastic days in Litchfield National Park and, frankly speaking, we wish we could spend some more time there. Anyway, it was time to move further to our next destination - Nitmiluk National Park. The park is located about a 4 hour drive south of Darwin (3.5h south of Litchfield NP). It is mostly famous by the gorgeous Katherine Gorge (sorry, but it is what it is), the place named Leliyn (Edith Falls) and the Jatbula Trail - seasonal 60km walk from Katherine Gorge to Leliyn.