Gagadju Adventure Tour

When you visit Kakadu National Park, you hear that two of the main attractions are Jim Jim and Twin Falls. However, you can't get there during the wet season because the roads are flooded, and no tours were visiting the area while we were there (the end of the dry season), because it was too hot. In order to drive on the road to the waterfalls yourself, you need 4WD along with a snorkel on your vehicle. We didn't have either. We heard that neither waterfall had a lot of water running over it anyway.


So we decided to do a day-long tour with Gagudju Adventure tours, because their 4WD vehicle would be able to take us to some other cool waterfall spots in the park. We met up with our driver and the other passengers in the morning, boarded the truck/bus thing, and were on our way. The first stop was Maguk, also known as Barramundi Gorge. You have to do a short hike to get to the waterfall, but the green plants everywhere and rock scrambles make it beautiful and fun.

After the hike, you reach Maguk Falls. It's not a huge waterfall, but the pool around it is great for a swim. We hung out here for awhile, just soaking in the pool, playing under the waterfall, and climbing the rocks.

After Maguk, we stopped on the side of the road and got out to take pictures with a large termite mound. You see these things everywhere in the park; some are really small and some are huge. I'll talk more about those when I get to my Litchfield post. But you can get an idea of the size by seeing how tall it is compared to me (I'm 5'8").

We had lunch at the park near Gunlom Falls. The Northern Territory is full of flies, and they buzz around your head and drive you crazy. We eventually invested in fly nets (you'll see those in later posts), but here's Zack using his cooling scarf as a makeshift fly swatter by creating a swinging arc to protect his head!

Gunlom Falls is where part of Crocodile Dundee was filmed. The scene where he spears the barramundi was shot on the banks of this plunge pool. We spent some more time swimming and hanging out here before heading back to Gagudju Lodge for a cold cider and beer. It was a pretty good day, though there was a lot of driving involved (Kakadu National Park is HUGE), and our guide didn't let us know that we could have hiked to the top of both waterfalls and had some good views and more plunge pools to enjoy. We probably should have just rented a 4WD vehicle and gone to these places ourselves, but oh well. I really can't complain when I spent my day swimming under waterfalls!