Hike to the Ubirr Rock Art Sites

Kakadu National Park is one of my favourite places in Australia. Located several hundred kilometers east of Darwin in the Northern Territory, the park is 20,000 square kms of beautifully preserved wildlife and history. This part of the park is only open during the dry season, as large portions of the road are flooded from November to March. 

The Ubirr Rock art site is one of many places you can visit in the park, but one of my favourite. The rocks served as a shelter for the Gagudju people, where they left art depicting their everyday life and stories they told. If you have time before you go, take a look into the history of the site(s), as there are lots of studies that have been done on the area.

The walk is around 1.5km with an optional walk to the lookout of 250m (which I highly recommend). The walk is in a loop and you can start from either side. Stop along the way where indicated to see the fascinating art sites, some tens of thousands of years old. These are the most detailed of the art sites on the park. 

Look for signs on your walk to the lookout, where you can do a bit of a climb to the top of the rock. You will be able to see over the vast plains over Kakadu here. When you're done taking pictures and appreciating the view, go back down to the look from the way you came.

If when you're sitting at the top of Ubirr Rock you feel a sense of deja vu, you may be right! One of Australia's celebrities, Paul Hogan, was here filming a well-known movie called Crocodile Dundee in the 80's. One of the panoramic views in the movie was shot here from the lookout. If you're interested, you can look up where many of the other shots were filmed around Kakadu, where a majority of the Australian scenes were filmed.