Top things kids can learn while travelling in the NT

Seven-year-old Abbey is enamoured with a baby crocodile at Darwin’s Crocodylus Park, cradling the soft-skinned creature in her hands and staring into its slit pupil. When I tell her crocodiles are one of the most ancient species on the planet — more than 200 million years old — she demands to know how long everything else has been here. Erm, better leave that question to the experts Crocodylus Park!

Down in Katherine at the School of the Air, we discovered how kids in remote areas have been learning for 67 years. Abbey gets behind a computer and talks with Sarah from Tenant Creek about a school assignment about her vegetable garden.

After checking out some rock art, William is fascinated to learn about early Australians hunting with spears for kangaroo and birds. He later tries his hand by spear-throwing at a target at the Top Didj Cultural Experience and Art Gallery at Katherine. The kids also learn how traditional stories of hunting and the Dreamtime are told through painting. Using the traditional rarrk style, the kids paint lotus leaf, yams and goannas in stripes of white, black and brown. Mum gets into the spirit — and I confess, her brolga is mighty impressive! Our teacher, Manuel explains how traditional stories of hunting and the Dreamtime were told through painting, pausing briefly to help the kids correct a shaky hand or wobbly line. Their artworks now sit proudly on their bedside tables. Learning to paint in the local style is just one of many memories we collect in the NT.

A few short hours drive to Kakadu and we're are soaking up Guluyambi Cultural Cruise drfiting slowly down the East Alligator River. Birdlife is everywhere – from magpie geese to kingfishers and galahs. Kakadu is home to a third of Australia’s bird species. We play spotto for crocodiles, but that doesn’t prove much of a challenge as there are just so many to be seen, some lurking on the riverbank, others floating with just their eyes showing above the surface.