Our tour guide for the trip was a hefty half aboriginal girl called Trisha, her mother was from the local tribe and her father was Swedish, though she didn't elaborate on how they came to meet.
Trisha spoke like an aborigine, liberally dropping her plurals, auxillaries and possesives and using mob to mean people. She knew everything about the river and the animals and birdlife along the way, including this Whistling Kite, a bird that's as common at the top end as the house sparrow is in Britain, though knowing this doesn't stop you marvelling whenever they fly over your head.
"He saying welcome to Kakadu" said Trisha as he whistled in the direction of our boat.
Then she spotted twenty or so brolgas hanging about with some horses and started whooping and hopping about.
"Them there is the brolga" she exclaimed, "must be twenty of them out back, they is the emblem of the Northern Territory and when they arrive it mean the rains is coming, yeah? You be sure to get a photo cos that sure is a sight for my eyes".
And with that, almost the entire tour bus of khaki cotton leaned to the right side of the boat and for a moment we were a bit closer to the croc-infested water than I was happy with.
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