Kakadu Part 3 Animal Tracks Safari

The day after our Jim Jim Falls trip we were lucky enough to go on amazing tour called the Animal Tracks Safari. It is a whole day (1 pm til 8pm) spent with a local Aboriginal lady called Patsy on the Buffalo Farm which is located a few km from Cooinda. It is owned by the local aboriginals. It is predominantly used as a source of food for those doing it tough in the region and they drive to Katherine and other areas once a week and share out the buffalo to those who aren't getting enough to eat. So it was good to know that the money we spent on the tour is going to a good cause as well as being a great day out for us.
Our first stop was to pick up some of the meat we would be cooking up for our dinner. No pre packaged steaks here....



Just some freshly shot Magpie Geese! Our next stop was on the banks of a water hole watching Patsy and her sister Jennifer find lily flowers for us to try. We got to try the stalk which was a bit like celery and also the seed pods which reminded me of sunflower seeds.









Couple of other inhabitants of the waterhole. Apparently Patsy has caught a 6 metre croc with a hand line so as long as she was closer to the edge than us we weren't too worried!

The next part of our dinner we had to gather were freshwater mussels. We dug these out of the mud with digging sticks.




Then Patsy and her sister Jennifer whipped up a basket for us to carry them in.






We stopped to collect some palm fronds for a basket weaving lesson later in the day and had some afternoon tea - green ants! They actually taste a bit like lime.


Patsy grabs the nest out of the tree and crushes them up in her hands.

The last stop before dinner was to find water chestnuts. This involved bashing at clods of dirt with a hammer to try and find the chestnuts. It definitely gives you an appreciation of how hard the hunter gatherer lifestyle is and why so few young aborigines want to live like that.

We stopped for dinner on the edge of some wetlands and the kids got involved in preparing the geese for cooking. They helped pluck them, watched them being gutted, then Patsy put them onto the flames to singe off the down. Jack then gave them a brush and they were ready to be put into the ground oven with some buffalo meat, a whole barramundi and some damper.









The boys watched as Patsy fed the goose guts to the whistling kites.



We then sat and watched the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen.








These photos look fake but that is really what it looked like. Even the kids were quiet watching it.




We then got to eat all the food we collected. Michael enjoyed his barramundi and the kids liked the buffalo and the goose. Charlie liked the damper!
On the way home we listened to Patsy tell stories of what it was like for her growing up and Sean the tour guide also told us more about her life. Overall it was a really special day. We all learnt so much about the lives of the bush people and their culture and why the elders find it so hard to keep the younger generation in the bush. It is much easier to go to the supermarket when you are hungry, that's for sure!