“You made the world and saw that it was good.” Those are lyrics from Wonderful Maker by Chris Tomlin. Every now and then I’ll put itunes on random and see what comes up, and this was one of the first songs played this morning. How beautifully does that line sum up how I feel lately? Yesterday I got back from a three day trip into Kakadu National Park, the largest national park in all of Australia. After Africa, I didn’t think it would be possible to come across something that is so awe-inspiring again, but sure enough, I found myself full of wonder the entire trip. We left Monday morning and made our first stop at The Crocodile Jumping Cruise, it was your typical touristy thing to do in Australia. First we got to play with their snakes, sizing up around 12 feet. That kept us entertained for a good bit of time until it was time to load the boat. The boat was set up with two levels, the bottom lined with glass windows and the top was an open deck. I took my seat on the bottom and we took off on the river. Basically how it works is a crew member dangles a piece of meat off of the top deck and the crocodiles literally jump out of the water to try and catch it. Although I don’t particularly care for forcing animals to behave differently than they should in the wild, it was amazing to see the shear force and power of these ancient creatures. It felt as if we were in the middle of Jurassic Park. As with most of the things I’ve done, I feel like I need pictures to attempt to justify and explain what I saw, words seem not adequate enough to describe it.

After the Croc Jumping Cruise, we got back in the troopies (the name for their 4x4’s) and took off for our campsite in the heart of Kakadu. It was a long trek and would take us most of the day. We made one special stop along the way, a visit to the Ranger Uranium Mine. Something that only the Engineering group went to, which I can see why. The best part of the tour was that we all had to wear orange vests, hardhats, and eye protection, yet on the entire trip a lady carried a tiny infant with her which wore no protection. I think our group took more pictures of the irony in that situation than the actual mine. After our tour had finished up, we got back in the troopies and finished the last leg of the journey into the park. We arrived at our campsite which turned out to be a luxury tented campsite, which essentially only means that they have bathrooms and more importantly showers with hot water. I was so used to Africa that I refused to use the running water, it just took away from the experience knowing that you could go take a hot shower in the middle of a jungle. Most people came with a large bag with a change of clothes and everything for the trip; I just came with a towel and bathing suit. I’m learning how to pack much more efficiently from this summer. Anyway, so that night we hung out around the campfire and practiced our skills on the didgeridoo. Now I’ve never had much skill when it comes to musical instruments, sadly the didgeridoo didn’t change that. I got pretty good at shooting spit out of the end quite far, but that didn’t count for much.

For those of you who don’t know much about the didgeridoo I’ll come a little history lesson on it. The didgeridoo is made from a hollowed out tree branch caused by termites. The story behind it is that there once was an old evil man who lived on the top of the rocks. He was known for going into the local communities and stealing the women and wives. The men eventually got fed up with this and set out to kill him. They attempted to spear him to death but the man had special powers and the spears only bounced off of him. Frustrated, the men came up with a new plan. The old man would typically come down to the billabong while the women were fetching water to steal the wives. One night, the men of the community dug a large pit and covered it with leaves, the next day when the evil man came down to the billabong, he fell into the hole. As he fell into the hole, his didgeridoo got stuck in the wall. (and when I say didgeridoo I’m referring to the thing special to only men, not the wooden instrument) The men ran over to kill the evil man but the women insisted that they be allowed to have him first to repay him for what he did to them. As punishment, the women ran over and chopped off his didgeridoo, leaving it stuck in the side of the wall. The evil man picked it up and blew into it and then died. This is why only men are allowed to play the didgeridoo, because if a woman were to play the instrument, they would instantly become pregnant. And that’s how the didgeridoo came to be. Anyway, to made a long story short, I pretty much stink at playing it.

Anyway, after we were done hanging out around the fire we all went to bed. The next morning we were up bright and early, had breakfast, and loaded the troopies for the day. The back of a troopies is essentially to long pads lining both sides of the car behind the driver and passenger. Eight of us piled into the back of each of the three troopies and took off. The driver and guide of my troopie was named Lionell. He is part Aboriginal and deeply cares about his culture and history and wants to share it with others. He’s a great guy and I learned so much from him, but simply driving with him was worth the entire trip. We took the lead of the three car caravan and took off for Jim Jim Falls, rated as the number one place to see in the world (at least according to our guides). We were cruising at a good 60-70 mph and talking with Lionel at the same time when he suddenly yelled something and started swerving across the road. We pulled a 180 and flew back in the opposite direction, until he pulled another 180 and slammed the car off on the side of the road. He jumped out of the car leaving us all piled on top of one another in the back. It took us a few seconds to get untangled and jump out of the car after him. As we got out, Lionel came walking towards us with a Frilled-Neck Lizard in his hands. Somehow, between flying down the road, telling us a story, passing a few cars on a narrow road, and flying by thousands and thousands of trees, he managed to spot a lizard on the side of a tree. It was one of the craziest things I have seen, and well worth it. Frilled-Neck Lizards are hard to find and we had started off our day finding one, not too bad. The rest of the caravan soon caught up and we all huddled on the side of the road taking pictures. We got back in and took off back down the road. No more than five minutes passed before we were doing donuts in the street again. This time he had seen an Olive Python on the side of the road, so we naturally went over and played with it. Well I guess he played with it and we all watched. Afterwards we got back in the troopies and took off for the falls. An hour later we got there, but there was still an hour hike ahead of us to get there. Hidden back in a gorge, you have to cross massive boulders in the middle of a big canyon, any kids dream place to play at. When we finally got to the falls, we realized why it was worth all the work to get there. Have you ever seen something and five minutes later you realize that you had been starring at it the entire time, that’s the best way to describe Jim Jim. Towering above you and pouring two twin waterfalls over its’ rim, it crashes into the still pool of water at the bottom. If you try to track the water falling down, you loose it; its amazing any water makes it down without blowing away as mist. The shear height of it is intimidating. Such power and force. After taking my many pictures, I got into the water, which was beyond frigid, and swam towards the falls. I’m not gonna lie, I peed once along the way to warm myself up, but after talking with others that night, I found out that I wasn’t the only one. When I got under the falls it took all my strength to simply keep my head above water. I truly began to appreciate the power of the falls. After a few minutes in the water, it was time to get out. The shore was quite far away and it made a very difficult swim for most people, it turns out my Scuba training came in handy and the swim didn’t seem to bad to me. One guy got out and threw up and started hyper-ventilating. We nearly had to carry him out of the gorge. When everyone had gotten out of the water, we went and sat at one of the beaches and had lunch. Then we made the hike back to the parking lot. From Jim Jim Falls we then traveled to an Aboriginal Art Site. One of our guides explained what all the paintings were and told us the stories behind them. By that time, the sun was setting and we drove to a lookout point. It was our first vertical climb and we hiked to the top of a hill/mountain/rock thing. We sat and overlooked the entire park. The sun was setting behind us and it lit up the rock mountains a brilliant red. If you have ever been to Sedona in Arizona it kind of looks like that. The entire park looks much like the Endless Planes of Africa except covered in trees with the occasional rock structure emerging from the ground. After the sunset, we drove back to the campsite and hung around the campfire one last time.

The next day we went to Yellow Waters, a large billabong near the center of the park. From there we drove to an Aboriginal settlement and met with one of the local women. She showed us around the homestead and told us some history about Aboriginal culture. We then split up by gender and the women went off to weave and the guys had a didgeridoo contest and the winner won a t-shirt. Sadly I had not improved much since my last attempt and didn’t come close to winning. Afterwards we then played some Australian Rules football with the local kids and tour guides. Soon lunch was prepared and then we were back on the road. The rest of the day we spent driving out of the park and by night we were back in good ole’ Darwin. Tomorrow I will be heading off to Alice Springs and then down to Uluru. Sunday I will get in to Sydney and then the serious class work starts up. However I am making sure that I find lots of chances to get out of the Sydney, a few of us are looking into going out on the ocean to watch the Humpback Whale Migration, from what I hear you come a couple feet from touching the eye of the whales. Guaranteed 100% sighting at this time of the year, I’m getting pretty lucky in my timing. First the wildebeest and zebra migration and now a humpback whale migration; not too bad. I’m continued to be blown away by the beauty surrounding me on this planet. God is truly a wonderful creator, I am beginning to better understand what lots of the worship songs mean that we sing in church. “You make everything glorious”, “who imagined the sun and gave source to its light”, “how great is our god”, “blessed be your name, when the suns shining down on me”, “your spirit like water to my soul”, “you’re the water I drink, the treasure I seek”, “I could sing of your love forever”. I’ve never had so many lyrics jump into my head that all of the sudden mean so much more. God is so present in this world around us. What will it be like when we are living alongside Him in heaven?