Nothing like a cruise down the East Alligator River to kick
off the day. Our guide was a middle age Aborigine who laid down the wisdom of
the ancients pretty heavily on us. His reasoning was “We are still here after
40,000 years, ergo we know what we are doing.” Fair enough, but the native
Australians have the same problem that native Americans have, in that the
allures of civilization, such as old trucks and alcohol, “distract” them from
their simple, virtuous lives. In this case the native people of Kakadu National
Park, which amount to about 15,000 people in an area of close to a million
acres, keep producing babies but their numbers continue to steadily decrease. The
native people are the formal owners of the land, which they lease to the
government to use as a national park.
Anyway, our guide took us to see crocodiles, and once again
I heard that “sweeties” are no big deal, and are even fun to swim with, but
“salties” have a mean disposition and are really dangerous. A salty can sprint
from complete repose to the speed of a horse in but a few seconds, which has
caused more than one death among clueless tourists. As we approached a ford,
where some people were fishing with water to their ankles, we saw a big croc
come to check things out. Needless to say, the fishermen promptly decamped.
We heard a lot of interesting stories about the seasons, the
legendary barramundi (a fish that grows to the size of a large salmon), the
birds, the plants, and the connection of the people to the landscape. The
native Australians remain largely hunter-gatherers, and I was particularly
fascinated by a demo of the way they spear-fish. The curious thing is that they
use the technique of the atlatl or spear-thrower, in which a piece of wood the
length of the forearm is used to propel a light spear. Silly me when I thought
this was a tool used only in Mesoamerica; rather, it seems to be a tool that
was “invented” independently in Mesoamerica, in Australia, and probably also in
Africa and Europe as well. I believe in Mesoamerica its use goes back to 3,000
years ago, and in Australia it is represented in pictographs that are dated at
1,000 years ago.
Having completed my tour, it was time for me to explore the
park, which is famous for at least three things: A good portion of it gets
inundated if the rainy season is intense, and thus merits the name of The
Wetlands; this year the rainy season was weak, so it looks more like the
Drylands, but once you know what to look for you can easily distinguish the
areas that are commonly flooded.
The second claim to fame is a long cliff, 30 to 50 m high,
of Proterozoic sandstones and sedimentary breccias. The sediments accumulated
in short fluvial systems (hence the breccias and prismatic cross-bedding), with
sand dunes forming in the flood plain (hence the laminations and festoon
cross-bedding), and probably transitioning to a coastal lagoon environment
(hence the ripple marks). The sandstones are quartz arenites, and the oligomictic
breccias are dominated by fragments of milky quartz. I wonder if anyone has
prospected them for placer gold? The angular nature of the fragments seems at
odds with the lack of feldspars in both the breccias and sandstones, which
makes me think on the Eocene of California, where wet and warm conditions led
to deep weathering of feldspars. Keep in mind that this was the Proterozoic, 2
billion years ago, when there were no land plants to form soils or retain the
products of weathering. Another peculiarity of these quartz sandstones, is that
for some reason they seem to be good seeds of lightening, so in the monsoon
season the thunderstorms are truly spectacular, with hundreds or even thousands
of discharges per hour. Lightening often causes fires, which do not rage
uncontrolled because of the accompanying heavy monsoon rains; a natural system
of checks and balances on the periodic renewal of the vegetation and the
ecosystem. Finally, there is the puzzle of the formation of the cliff itself,
since it runs for a good 50 km. I will advance the hypothesis that it was
formed as a coastal cliff, at a time of high stand in sea level; of course, I
have zero evidence for this hypothesis since I haven’t seen any young marine
deposits anywhere.
The third call to fame is the presence of lots and lots of
pictographs, ranging from graffiti scratched thousands of years ago by hooligan
teenagers, to sacred drawings which likely had significance only as part of a
ceremony, not unlike the sand paintings of the Navajo (archaeologists infer
this from the fact that some pictures are superimposed one on the other at
particular places). It is really hard to interpret what the pictographs
represent (now I understand the puzzlement look of my students when I draw a
diagram): I was so proud of myself when I saw a hunter using an atlatl, when
the explanatory board only stated that this particular pictograph was “new” at
less than 1,000 years old! I also recognized kangaroos, and with some prompting
from the explanatory boards was able to identify a crocodile, and several
barramundi arranged side by side (was this the home of the fish monger?). A few
of the pictographs have been identified by the native Australians as
representing some of their legends (fables that ended in some gruesome outcomes
for the wrongdoers) and creation stories. The latter take place in what they
call The Dream Time, when rainbow serpent came down from the clouds to
form the rivers, the floodplains, the animals, and the people.
I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Kakadu National Park, but
realize I am getting a bit tired of being a gypsy, never knowing where I will
spend the night next. I started on my way back to Darwin, thinking that maybe
along the way I could find a quaint little hotel to spend the night. I did find
a “colorful” motel in the town of Humpty Doo (no joke, that is the name of the
town), attached to the “world famous” Wild Hog Tavern. It was a dump, and the
crowd looked like hard-core drinkers (many of them sporting Wild Hog T-shirts),
but when I learned that the fee was AUS$ 100 per night I rebelled against the
absurdly high prices the tourist must pay for rather sub-standard lodging. So I
went all the way back to Darwin, back to my backpackers lodging. I think I am
about ready to go back home.
No comments:
Post a Comment