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After breaking camp at the Low Level Cara Park, we all went to the shopping centre again to buy bread. Then the long dreaded moment to say goodbye arrived. Let’s not unnecessarily dwell on our sorrow and grief… While Evie and Trevor headed south back home, we headed north on the Stuart Hwy. We drove the first few kilometres in silence. It will be more than a year before we see them again. But, then again, there’s telephones and e-mails. And snail mail to send chocolate survival kits down under! Once at the Adelaide River Inn, we realized that we had made a mistake in assuming that the Jumping Crocodiles Tours on the Adelaide River Queen depart from there. They depart another 100 km further north, near Humpty Doo, on the Arnhem Hwy. So we turned around to go to Kakadu NP first. After about 100 km on the Stuart, we turned left on the dirt road to Kakadu Hwy via Hayes Creek. Still on the Stuart, we watched one full-sized road train overtake another full-sized road train. Said dirt road, the Goldfields Loop, is pretty rough, with dips, one wet creek crossing and rocky stretches. After crossing the Darwin – Alice Springs railway track (still under construction) for the second time, we hit some corrugations. At one junction, we took a wrong turn. There was a weathered signpost, warning travellers about restricted access rights to a goldmine. There must once have been an arrow on that sign indicating the right way to continue. After arriving at the goldmine’s gate a few kilometres down that road, we turned left and took the main road again. We needed 90 minutes for 81 km from Hayes Creek turn off to the junction with the Kakadu Hwy. We had decided to spend two nights in Gunlom bush camp in Kakadu NP. A very good choice, as it turned out. The bush camp's pretty nice, close to Waterfall Creek, has shady sites, hot showers and flushing toilets. Camp fees are collected just before sundown by the camp host (5.40 AU$ per head and night). The road to the camp is 39 km long with corrugations and a bit of sand, we needed roughly 30 minutes. On inspecting the campground, we kept saying „Evie would have liked this“, or „Trevor should have seen that“. This was the first night without Evie and Trevor in two weeks. We went to bed unusually early. Beer can crushing isn’t any fun without a worthy contestant, either!
We idled the morning away on our site, doing nothing in particular but having brekkie, doing the dishes (a major effort), reading and updating our travelogues. After midday, we gathered our lazy bones together and walked to the waterfall and plunge pool (natural, potentially safe pool, but in crocodile country, you never know). After that short excursion, we crossed the camp and took the walking track to a nearby billabong and the South Alligator River under our feet. The billabong had already receded a fair bit, but was still visited by herons and cockatoos. The South Alligator was very shallow, its waters crystal clear, and we could have easily walked across it, had we wanted to. On the way back to the campground we came across red-tailed black cockatoos, but they were too far away to take a decent picture (we could have managed a black blob in the middle of a pic, definitely need a better telephoto lens), and just watched them for a while. After tea and after dark the camp was treated to some unexpected and unusual entertainment. Three Japanese, two young women and a young bloke, played a didj, an emu-caller (a short, hollowed-out piece of a tree which you hit with the palm of your hand, thus producing a sound like the typical gurgle of emus) and performed a fire dance, i.e. twirling burning sticks around while dancing. It looked very professional and almost eerie in the dark of the night. Quite some campers came from the other side of the campground to have a look.
As we didn’t want to sit on the tar the whole time, we decided to take the unsealed Jim Jim Road, a.k.a. Old Darwin Road, out of Kakadu to rejoin the Arnhem Hwy later on. We were lucky again, the road had been graded not too long ago. There were only a few corrugations here and there, the partly severe washouts had been filled in. Crossing the South Alligator River proved to be a piece of cake, yet very bumpy as the ford is rocky. There were three more wet creeks with sandy fords. We met one car and passed a huge base of the RAAF. We continued down Arnhem Hwy in direction of Darwin and turned off after crossing the bridge across the Adelaide River, to finally join one of the Jumping Crocodile Tours. Yes, it is touristy, but fun and informative nonetheless! Our timing was perfect, the next tour would depart one hour later, which we spent in the shade on the terrace next to the playground. Our two-head crew, both young women, one skipper and one croc-feeder, drove us upstream a fair bit. The Adelaide River is very wide and very deep (up to 11 meters). The water’s muddy. Some of the big crocs have partaken in the feeding for years. Mind you, these are wild estuarine crocodiles, who have come to know the boat and trust the crew, knowing that they’ll get a treat. And just a treat it is, they still have to hunt for food. Most of the crocodiles have names. The boats are double-deckers, on the first deck you’re almost on eye-level of the crocs and sitting behind glass windows, whereas the second deck is open except for the railing (about 1 m high), and shaded. We were told that the cushions on the benches are floating devices, which we should use in the unlikely event of the boat sinking. This unintentionally provoked laughter on the second deck (couldn’t hear those sitting downstairs), as obviously none of us could imagine getting ashore in one piece with all those crocs around. We also learned that scientific research has recently shown that crocodiles are attracted to bright colours – mainly red, orange and yellow. Everybody looked at one female passenger, who wore a yellow shirt and orange shorts. The seat cushions, by the way, were red… Our skipper went on to tell us, that not too long ago, a woman fell off the top deck. Every now and then, the boat will be slowly turned on the spot to stay close to a croc – that passenger must have leaned over the reiling and lost her balance. The croc that was up to feeding must have hoped for more than two or three pathetic frozen porc chops and went straight for her. The crew threw a yellow life vest and a life buoy in the water to distract the croc, which kindly enough went for those first, allowing for enough time to pull a very shaken tourist safely back on board. It is very impressive to see crocodiles jump out of the river about three metres below to grab the meat suspended from a long feeding pole (“One of you will be allowed to try their hand at feeding, but if you drop the feeding pole you’ll have to retrieve it”). The younger and lighter the croc, the higher it can jump. The biggest ones on our tour were about 4.5 meters long and therefore males, as females are notably smaller. Sidewinder, Nobby, Lethal Lizzie, Casper and all the others gave us a very good impression of the tremendous physical strength of these ancient reptiles. The smallest one was very young and only about one metre long. His name was ‘Killer’, which provoked another round of laughter, this being answered with “He’ll be one someday!”. Killer himself lay in the water close to the boat after his last jump, eyeing those laughing two-legged creatures on board, as if he was thinking “Come back in 20 or 30 years time, then you won’t be laughing anymore!” We couldn’t find the two six-metre crocs of that part of the river – one of them named Bogart, mustn’t have been hungry that day. The biggest crocodile in the Top End in recent years lived in Litchfield NP, was 7.5 metres long and was called ‘Shredder’. He was given that name because he had shredded the former master of that particular territory, a seven-metre croc called “Awesome”. Not that awesome after all, it seems…. Back to the jumping crocs of the Adelaide River: we had read somewhere that the croc population of the stretch of the river that the Adelaide River Queen and her sister ship, the Kakadu Spirit, cover, is estimated to be approx. 1800. Definitely not the place to swim! At the end of the tour, white-bellied sea eagles were fed, grabbing their piece of meat in flight from the feeding pole and bits of meat were thrown to kites. The kites had already accompanied the boat for a while, knowing they’d also get their share. They caught the meat in flight and ate it right away. It seems they’re the only birds of prey able to eat in flight, all the other need to land to eat. After the tour, which lasted about two hours, we drove to Howard Springs Caravan Park near Darwin and booked an unpowered site for four nights. We had pre-booked one of their cabins for our last night. When we told Ross and Viv (the owners), they were pleasantly surprised that we had come back. The campground was fully booked, and we would have had to cram ourselves onto the unpowered site. Ross had offered from the start to take the overflow site next to the office. We don’t have neighbours left or right, the powered site across the aisle is vacant, too, we have our own water tap, and dustbin, and a concrete slab. After dark, we could hear something in the trees behind our site, probably possums?
Today was devoted to support the Australian economy. To this end, we raided the Casuarina Shopping Centre. In the late afternoon, we went to the Mindil Beach Market with its many food stalls, and stalls selling everything from plastic souvenirs for kids to local art and craft. At sundown, we briefly left the market and went to the beach to watch the beautiful sunset – together with lots of other people. We had picked a spot a bit out of the way of the main crowd. We bought tea at one of the many food stalls and listened for quite a while to an Australian group performing live, called “Jabaru”. The couple plays music with Irish, African, South American and Australian elements and instruments. They are from Tasmania and are currently touring Australia. We liked their music that much that we bought one of their CDs. On 27 June, they would perform in a club in Darwin, accompanied by fire dancers (could that be the Japanese we saw in Gunlom camp?). We’d have loved to go there, but our flight back home was on 26 June. Bugger. This night, sitting in front of our camper, we saw two possums in the trees behind us. One of them climbed down the tree, observed us for a few minutes and then went around us with at least 10 m distance to get to the trees on the site opposite.
We went to the “Window on the Wetlands”, a permanent exhibition explaining the wetlands habitat. It is located about 60 km south of Darwin on Arnhem Hwy. Entry is free of charge, the exhibit is quite nice, especially for children, but could be improved as for the available information and the exhibits. We thought that at least one boardwalk into the wetlands would be rather nice, instead of just getting a view from the visitors centre. The Nite Markets in Darwin’s Mitchell Street seem to have ceased to exist, although they’re still mentioned in many brochures. We were there, but saw only one stall, not very exciting. We had a delicious barramundi filet in the Hog’s Breath Café before going back to Howard Springs and hanging out in front of our camper. Before parting with Trevor and Evie, we had exchanged gas bottles: they took the three litre bottle that we had bought in Cairns (there were no other sizes available), and we took their old one litre bottle for our remaining days down under. ‘Our’ two possums are getting bolder, the bigger one came as close as two metres when crossing our site, whereas the other one did finally come down from the tree, although it kept well away from us.
On the way to East Point Reserve, we visited the Mango Winery in Palmerston. We sampled the three wines available (extra dry, dry, sweet) and bought two bottles of the dry one. The mango wine is very nice, but should be well refrigerated. East Point Reserve is a popular recreation area for Darwinians. You can ride your pushbike, take a walk, sit on the beach, swim in Lake Alexander (freshwater) or have a BBQ on its shores. At East Point itself is a military museum. We were there at low tide and walked across the Point. In the remaining saltwater pools we saw fish, different kinds of water plants and even a sea cucumber. As we still needed a souvenir for our friends Gisèle and Christian, who were looking after our garden and our indoor plants, we went back to the Casuarina Shopping Centre. We were anxious to see what ‘our’ possums would be up to tonight. We cut an apple into four slices and placed them at the foot of their tree. Around 11 p.m., the bolder one climbed down the tree, grabbed one of the slices, and sitting on its hind legs and holding the apple slice in its front paws, ate it. It was less than two metres away from us. We hardly dared to breathe, as the possum ate, calmly watching us the whole time. When it had finished the first slice, it grabbed a second one and, holding it in its mouth, climbed up the tree to eat it up there. After a moment’s hesitation, the second possum climbed down and followed its mate’s example: it grabbed a slice, ate it on the spot, grabbed the second slice and went back up the tree. A few minutes later, the first possum came down the tree again and – without a worry in the world - ambled across our concrete slab, coming so close that we could have touched it, and slowly climbed up a tree. Courage had obviously abandoned the second possum. It stayed on its tree. There was another tree on the right side of our camper. The top branches of those two trees almost touched each other. The possum climbed to the outer tips of the branches and tried to jump onto the other tree. We heard the rustling of leaves, and then a mute “thump”. The poor possum’s jump had been too short and it had landed on top of our camper, i.e. on the canvas connecting the popped-up roof to the rear doors. There it was, sitting on the canvas above the right rear door. It looked a bit dazzled, walked around to the left side of the car, then back around to the right side and jumped on to the tree trunk, proceeding up the tree from there. We were glad that it hadn’t hurt itself. We didn’t take any pictures, because we didn’t want to use a flash. Never mind, though, seeing wild animals up close is always a unique experience.
After brekkie, we haphazardly packed our camper and picked up our cabin’s keys in the office. Funnily enough, they gave us the same we had last year. We put all our stuff in the cabin, turned off our camping fridge and wiped it out, then went back to town for a last stroll. Ross had given us a bottle of Aussie white wine for tea. We decided, however, to take it back home and have it there. The wine was delicious, thanks again, Ross! After tea and after accomplishing the dreary task to pack our bags, we sat on the small wooden patio in front of our cabin, when a grey shadow shot past our heads on eye-level, slowing down just in time not to bump into the neighbouring cabin, touched its wall with its feet, turned around in our direction and settled on the post of our porch’s staircase. We could finally identify our nightly visitor: a tawny frogmouth. Another tawny frogmouth had visited our site on the Kona Lakeside Caravan Park in Kununurra every night last year. This one sat on the post for about 10 minutes, calmly looking around, every now and then also gazing at us, who sat only three metres away. It disappeared as abruptly and as silently as it had come. When we were ready to go to bed, Claudia saw a cockroach next to the stove. Nothing spectacular in this climate, so we decided not to worry. In the middle of the night, Torsten woke up because something was tickling his face. He thought it was a mosquito and waved his hand to sweep it off. Far from stopping, the tickling continued and something tried to crawl into his left nostril. Torsten shot up in bed and frantically wiped his face; he heard a ‚plop‘ and turned on the light. In the meantime, Claudia had also woken up. When Torsten looked around, he saw a half-dead cockroach on the floor next to the cabin wall. The cockroach was put out of its misery, and the light in the front part of the cabin was left on to keep its relatives at bay. What a nauseating incident! As if it weren’t enough that this was our last night down under!
Reluctantly, we returned our cabin’s key to Viv and Ross. At the NT General Store on Cavenagh Street we bought a refill bottle of methylated spirits for our camping cooker. The little time we still had was spent on Mindil Beach. They were already putting up the stalls for the Thursday Beach Market. We’d have loved to go and see Jabaru perform again! It was only a short way to the KEA depot. Our car was enthusiastically taken over, as it was new and undamaged. A taxi took us to the airport, we checked our luggage in and settled down on one of the benches outside. We wrote a postcard to Evie and Trevor, and enjoyed the sun, the clean air and the bright blue skies. As usual, the flight back home seemed to be much longer than the flight to Australia. We are already planning our next trip: to visit Evie and Trevor in Bendigo in September/October 2004 and explore Victoria and New South Wales. We’ll also continue to play the lottery, they must draw the right numbers some day! Bugger!
See
youse
soon down under in Down Under!
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Copyright © 2003 by Torsten Neumann. All rights reserved.
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