Fri 8th July - Territory Wildlife Park, Swim at BERRY SPRINGS, and Dinner at the wharf.
Lots of people had told us we must see the Territory Wildlife Park while we were in DARWIN. From what we had heard it sounded as though it didn’t have anything to offer that we hadn’t seen elsewhere, but decided to have a look, and as it was out near BERRY SPRINGS, we would make a day of it and have a swim in the springs as well.
The Wildlife Park was very enjoyable with some of the highlights being the Free Flight Display where a Buzzard demonstrated his skills at opening an emu egg by using a rock to repeatedly smash against the egg until it broke. The aquarium with its walk through glass tunnel, like Kelly Tarltons, was impressive, as was the simulated Monsoon Rain Storm with recorded thunder and flashes of lightning.
Lots of separate areas, all specializing in some part of the Australian Flora and Fauna. Overall we felt it wasn’t quite as good as Desert Springs, which we had seen at Alice Springs.
After the Wildlife Park we went to BERRY SPRINGS and had a swim in the lukewarm water. A lovely setting in the bush where the creek had been dammed up to create a huge swimming pool.
Phillip had told us in an email that he used to swim there when he was working in Darwin. They decided not to swim there any more after an 8 foot crocodile was found also enjoying the lukewarm water of the swimming pool.
To round off our stay in DARWIN we decided to go back to the wharf for tea. We had a lovely meal on the wharf watching the sun set and the tour boats chugging by. Cameron went for a walk at one stage, and came back very excited, he had seen a couple of dolphins playing in the water at the end of the wharf. We went down and watched them for a while. It appeared to be a mother and baby.
After a very lovely evening it was time to head home to bed. Tomorrow we would head for KAKADU.
Sat 9th July - Darwin to Jabiru
We had booked on the 11:00 cruise for the Adelaide River Queen Jumping Crocodile Cruise. The Adelaide River Cruises are situated on the ADELAIDE RIVER where it crosses the Arnhem Highway on the way from DARWIN to JABIRU in KAKADU NATIONAL PARK. It was going to take us a good hour to get there from our Motor camp on the outskirts of DARWIN, so we were up early and on the road.
We arrived with plenty of time to spare, and while Christel and Cameron had an impromptu school lesson, I wandered down to the jetty where our cruise was going to leave from. Directly across the river, sunning itself in the mud was a big salt water crocodile.
I raced back and interrupted the school lesson. Our first Saltie in the wild. Needless to say, the excitement about our forthcoming cruise put paid to further school work.
We had no sooner left the jetty and we were spotting salties everywhere. Some huge, others only 2 to 3 metres long. The Adelaide River Queen Jumping Crocodile Cruises are renowned for just that. Jumping crocodiles.
One of the first things that happened once we got on the boat was the skipper had to give us a safety talk. He told us that they had all recently undergone a safety refresher course and that all staff members on the boat were now fully up to date with safety procedures.
He said that during the course they had done some experiments with crocodiles to try and find out what made them attack people. He said one very clear message they got from these experiments was that crocodiles were very colour aware, and that they always reacted very aggressively to the colours of bright orange and yellow.
He then went on to say that in the unlikely event of the boat capsizing or sinking while we were on the cruise; there were life jackets in the net above our heads. If you look up now you will see they are all coloured bright orange and yellow.
About 5 minutes into the cruise, we slowed down beside a large croc sunning himself on the river bank. One of the crew hung some meat over the side of the boat on the end of a long pole. The croc swum up to it, and as it tried to grab the meat, she lifted the pole. After three or four times the croc finally reared up out of the water about a meter or so and grabbed the meat. Brilliant stuff.
This exhibition was repeated about 10 times as we cruised up the river. There seemed to be crocs everywhere. Some in the water, others sunning themselves on the banks. Some of them obviously expecting to get a feed when they heard the boat coming. To watch them slither off the mud, then swim out to the boat was just such an awesome experience, only to be capped off when they lunged up out of the water to grab the meat.
The commentary about crocs as we cruised up the river was very informative, and we all learned heaps about these magnificent prehistoric creatures. This was going to be a hard act to follow, and we were all on a high when we got back to the caravan.
From the ADELAIDE RIVER, we continued east along the ARNHEM Highway towards JABIRU, our destination for the day. We could see smoke from bush fires ahead of us, and as we got closer to the SOUTH ALLIGATOR RIVER, realised the fires were obviously very close to the road.
As we approached the South Alligator River Bridge, we could see the smoke was completely blocking the road just on the other side of the bridge. A car in front of us was backing off the bridge, apparently not prepared to go any further. We cautiously passed the car and drove onto the bridge where we stopped to assess the situation. We could see most of the fire was on the downwind side of the road, but there was still enough smoke blowing across the road to completely block our vision.
From what we could see, the fire on the upwind side had mostly burnt out, and the fairly strong crosswind was quickly driving the flames away from the road on the downwind side.
We decided it was fairly safe to proceed, and slowly drove into the smoke. Soon we could see clear air on the other side and quickly sped up to get through. We could feel the heat from the fires on both sides of the road, and drove for about half a kilometre with flames on both sides of us.
Quite an exciting experience, but definitely not the sort of thing to be taken lightly.
We got to JABIRU at about 2.30 and were soon all set up at our motor camp. After a cuppa and a feed we went for a drive around the town, and ended up at the swimming pool where we spent a very pleasant hour or so cooling off. We got talking to the guy who was working in the ticket box at the pool, and the old question of, ‘where are you from?’ soon came up. When we said New Zealand he said what part. When we said Taranaki he said “Oh yeah, I grew up in Eltham. My parents used to own the Railway Hotel. When I was about 10 they sold that and bought the New Commercial Hotel in Stratford. After that we moved to Waipukurau. Small world, eh!!!.
JABIRU is a small town built by a mining company in 1983. They obviously wanted to keep their employees happy, as the pool is Olympic Size - 50 metres long. It just looks so out of place in this little village. Never mind, we weren’t complaining.
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