22nd  November Darwin to Jabiru

We picked up a car to cover the time in Darwin and the following days in the Kakadu National Park.  In attempting to get my Garmin navigation system working I discovered that the data on both my Australian and European micro-SIM cards had been erased, possibly because they went through an X-ray scanner at Heathrow 2. These were in the hold luggage while others in my two phones, which were in my hand luggage, were fine.  We thus had to use Google maps on my Samsung mobile phone to guide us out of Darwin and onto Jabiru in the Kakadu National Park. 

A give you an idea of the scale of Kakadu National Park it is 1/3 the size of Switzerland.

There were fairly straight roads down to Jabiru with lots of termite hills in the land surrounding the road. The temperature on the route down was around 37C,which isn't an issue with air conditioning in the car. There were  a number of small road kills evident along the way. 

We booked into the Mecure Crocodile Hotel in Jabiru, which is shaped like a crocodile, see later image from our flight over the national park.

Jubiru was first established for mining uranium and this will continue until 2021 but after this time the licence will be withdrawn and the community of 6000 will be reduced and many of the shops, few that there are, will be impacted. The uranium mined powers 10% of the world’s nuclear power stations.

We had tremendous thunder storm and lightning during the nights.