During the wet, water cascades off the plateau and submerges thousands of acres of the Top End, turning dozens of sandstone outcrops such as Ubirr into little islands.
Beneath it, stretching all the way to the feet of Ubirr, lies a huge and perfectly flat, lettuce-green flood plain, through which the lazy curves of the East Alligator River meander.
Sitting on the warm sandstone at the top of Ubirr rock and peering over the edge to palm trees far below, I am dizzyingly aware that the scene before me has remained unchanged since prehistory.
