Gubara Walk

I went on strike last weekend. Linds and I had been on the move for the last umpteenth weeks, often leaving after work on Friday with the apartment a war zone of shoes, bags, and work clothes and the car filled with all our camping gear - no time to sort, we're losing light! So despite the desire to head out to see some friends roast a goat on a spit, we stayed at home and slept in. Not bad.


The previous weekend had been the Katherine ultra challenge (a six stage, 100 km race), and before that we had hiked up onto the escarpment at Gubara. I will write a bit more about the race later, but I wanted to get some pics of the walk up first. It was a strange and diverse landscape - lots of micro-habitats laid out on the harsh tableland.

It is also an area known for Aboriginal rock art. Linds and I went scrambling up around a tumbled spire in search, only to find a number of great pieces on the much more sensible flat ground. It was my first time seeing outlines of hands, and I was struck by the tenderness of small child's mark. In other areas there are examples of Aboriginal contact art: precisely rendered ships and airplanes, and white men invariably drawn with their hands in their pockets, often smoking pipes - the Top End equivalent of British colonial etchings of indigenous folks squatting with spears.