The Roper and Limmen National Park

​June 9-11 The Roper and Limmen National Park

What's it like out on the southern edge of Arnhem Land within cooee of the Gulf and the Arafura sea? That's where we've been over the past week. It's Amazing!

Roper Bar. The crossing can be hazardous at times.
The river is obviously shallow around this stretch and
that stopped the ships from navigating the river further upstream.

The rapids at Roper Bar where we drive across and back - just for the heck of it!

Tells its own story! Taken just out of Roper Bar.

We camped at Munbililla, aka Tomato Island in the Limmen National Park. Tomato Island is a small island once big enough to grow tomatoes in the middle of the mighty Roper river. The island looked pretty small when we were there but perhaps that has to do with the very big wet season they had this year.

Peaceful looking isn't it but just around the bend a humongous croc was spotted a day later. 

The river is humongous I kid you not. It was once a major route to bring supplies and manpower from the Gulf to Roper Bar and from there by oxen further inland to complete the overland telegraph line. ​The river attracts fishing enthusiasts who camp for months going out on the river daily after the biggest Barra yet. But there are very big crocs in there too and that kept us well back from the edge.

Serious fishermen camp on the river for months during the dry.
They are well set up drawing on bore water and
generating their own electricity.

We wandered through bush and grasslands and found flowers so gorgeous and of so many varieties. At the estuary of the river, Port Roper 70 Ks away by road, we found mangrove swamps, fishing and, what I think was, crabbing camps. Seemed so very isolated.

The ant hills, rather than termite mounds, were huge brown citadels - fat mounds wider than they -were high compared to the termite hills which are multi-spired reaching quite a height in some places.
It is a land of contrasts from lush vegetation to dust, rock and sand. Wee geckos to monstrous crocs 6-800 ml across the jaw, archer fish no bigger than your pinkie to metre-length Barramundi. We've seen horses, donkeys, one or two dingos, buffalo (poo) and cattle. All wandering free. Astonishing!

I sat and watched a tiny masked finch stand his ground against a bird three times his size in the ash of a campfire in a fight for pieces of charcoal. Lots of beautiful colourful finches here because of the abundance of seed grasses.

And at the end of the day a tranquil lagoon still filled to the brim with water and decorated with mauve water lilies. As the dry season progresses water holes like this will shrink and the wild life will be drawn to those remaining largish ones.

It's indeed a land of contrasts, gentleness and quiet along side the relentless fight to survive which in this land of abundance is not such a struggle.