The white rental with rooftop tent stops decisively a few meters away from me. A middle-aged woman, grey hair shaved short at the sides, jumps out energetically and smiles at me. ‘Virigin’, she points at herself and ‘Stefan’ at the middle-aged man circling the front of the car from the driver’s side. ‘French’, she explains her briefness. I point out that they have no space on the backseat but they swiftly rearrange their possessions and in I go. There is no need to ask where I want to go. Kakadu National Park is large but there is only one main road.

Twenty-four hours later, I am still with them. We hiked together, viewed together and bush-camped together over night. They shared their Spaghetti and Pesto with me. Now we are at Yellow Waters. Their excitement looking for birds is contagious. Eagerly I take their binoculars to have a closer look at a black Cormorant, spreading out his wings to dry off after a hopefully successful dive. They know all their names, but in French. I tell them the names of the few I know in English. They are impressed. So am I. When we walk back to the car, we see a small motorboat cruising across the billabong, stopping nearby. Without shame, Virgin walks over and tells the debarking ranger that it is her birthday. She would like to have a trip on the boat. To my utter surprise he agrees and not five minutes later we pass only half a meter by a curious croc before it disappears into the murky depth of the water. There are birds everywhere. Ducks, geese, brolga and egrets. Stalking the muddy green planes between what the dry has left of the river, picking out insects from the ground, hunting small fish, attracted by the pink water lilies at the riverbanks, but still weary of the crocodiles. So confident is Virgin in her performance that I have to ask in the end ‘It’s not really your birthday, right?’. ‘No’, she smiles amused. ‘But in France, that we do to get things for free.’ Oh, well in that case…

In Cooinda, next to Yellow Waters we go our separate ways. Not three days later, I see them again, hundreds of kilometres away, in the Corroborre Tavern. While I’m sitting at my laptop, with stable internet for the first time in several days, they walk in. They point at me. I point at them. We have to laugh. They stay the night and then head to Darwin. Less than forty-eight hours later, we meet for the third and last time, in Litchfield National Park. I am just about to swim the hundred meters to a stunning waterfall when I turn around and see their smiling faces standing at the water's edge. ‘What?’, I can’t stop myself from yelling. They smile. Life is funny sometimes. I had told them about my plans and they decided to also take a look.

The local shuttle service brings me from Cooinda to the road towards Nourlangie Rock. A ranger picks me up and takes me the last few kilometres. ‘That’s where they found that young lady a few weeks ago. She had died of a heatstroke.’ A warning that I take seriously. Here, my ability to do a hike is measured by the amount of water I carry. My travel backpack stays behind, hidden from sight in a corner of the toilet facilities, not that the load of senior citizens arriving at the same time would manage to lift it anyways, while I start the walk. Although interested in the group’s guide’s explanations, they are too slow for me and I press on towards the lookout. Apart from the beautiful aboriginal rock art, the most prominent feature is the Nourlangie rock itself. As if a giant with oversized brushes had decided to colour the originally red rock with huge black and white stripes. A gigantic, unshaped easter-egg reaching into the clear blue sky, sprinkled with green trees and shrubs, overseeing an ocean of dried-out yellow grass. Up there, where the rock forms a small plateau, the creative eye recognizes a feather-shaped boulder, reminder of an ancient aboriginal story, a sacred site, warning everyone against intimate relations with blood relatives, the consequences so damning that photos of the story painted on the walls are prohibited from being distributed.

I make my way to Jabiru, the central hub of Kakadu. The height of national park infrastructure boasts with its supermarket and service station. It is significantly smaller and sadder than I imagined. But ‘there is full reception here, that’s why we don’t have wifi’, explains the campground host proudly. A few days later I sit in a small car with a plant photographer. ‘Twenty years ago, Jabiru was flourishing. Before they closed the mine, they had thousands of people living there. Then the government left its management to the aboriginals. And, unfortunately, they are not very good at it.’ He tells me grieving the past and walking the barely visible line between realism and racism.

A retired Swiss couple takes me to Ubirr, more rock art, more lookouts, one particular promising a sunset that the incoming rain clouds undermine very effectively in front of a large group of undergrad students, taking selfies nonetheless and chattering loudly. I feel like an old person wishing them to shut up. But the view is stunning. In front of us lies a dried-out flood-plane. Tiny oscillatory reflections, the hint of leftover water, attract all the animals that haven’t made it to the larger bodies of water yet. ‘Sometimes you can have tens of crocs hiding in the mud around these billabongs, just waiting until the rain comes back.’, a ranger tells me. Most of the plane is black, burnt from wild and controlled fires; in the far I see a handful of tornadoes forming, moving and collapsing continuously. The fires restore the earth, they say. ‘But they overdo it a little, the small trees have no chance of growing to adulthood.’ Contradicts the plant photographer. In any case, it is hard to imagine that just a few months later, all this will be covered with water. And endless lake. Filled with crocs.

A lift with yet another ranger, a construction worker, leaving Kakadu, Corroborre Tavern, another construction worker, a garbage disposal truck, a in Karma-believing young British fellow, the stunning waterfall, the plant photographer and I reach Florence Falls in Litchfield National Park. And the morning I’m about to leave, guess who I meet again? Esther, the woman that gave me a ride more then ten days ago (see previous post). She recommends me a hostel in Darwin. Life is funny sometimes.