Day 52

Darwin - Adelaide River - Darwin

"But it's all right. Im jumpin jack flash,
Its a gas! gas! gas!"

We crammed a lot into today and had an awesome time in doing so!

We left Darwin to first drive out to the Adelaide River to see some dancing crocodiles - wow did we see a good number of them too!

The cruise is only for an hour but is was jam packed full of croc sightings and feedings there was never any down time. The crocs on the river have been fed now for a few years and so if they are hungry, they recognise the motor sound and so quickly slide into the river to swim out to the boat. We had been in the boat for about 2 minutes before we spotted a 3m hungry Salty keen for a feed. He performed well for his chunk of meat and photographed well for us too!

This continued with various other crocs of varying sizes - nothing under about 4 Metres though until..... Hannibal. Jeez he was huge! Over 6 Metres long and estimated at about 100 years old. They say he is as old as the Titanic except that he's still swimming!

Hannibal saw us and was in the water quickly but...there was some competition..... another 4m . This would be interesting as Hannibal swam quickly at the other...He wasn't silly though and got outta there quick smart! Hannibal then turned and beached himself up a muddy bank and waited for us to come to him. He's the one in the pics with the kids. Bit of a poser too old Hannibal!

We saw 12 crocs all up - including one called Mary who has had both front arms ripped off in a fight with another croc at some point in her life.

We returned to the jetty feeding kites off the boat and even fed a white bellied sea eagle by gunning the boat and throwing a chunk of meat for him to catch - great sight!

From the river, we headed to the Wetland viewing centre just up the road and then onto Fogg Dam where we saw lots of turtles - 2 even crossing the road in front of us we had to stop for.

The dam itself was closed due to "a large Esturine Crocodile" that they were trying to catch - a couple of traps out for it waiting. Pity though as there was lots of bird life and it looked like a nice place.

We then headed back into Darwin to Aquascene to feed the masses of fish that swim into Doctors Gully on the high tides. There were masses of milk fish, diamond scaled mullet, batfish and catfish. We all must have thrown in 2 loaves of bread each by the time we got asked to leave at 6pm! We had heaps of fun hand feeding the fish off the ramp!

By the time we left the sun was almost down and so we quickly decided that a few pizzas and beers would be a great option to finish the day off so we headed out to Mindil Beach to watch the sun go down (without the crowds) and enjoyed the best Dominoes pizza I've ever had - they obviously haven't learned to be stingy with the toppings like in the eastern states!

Tomorrow will be a much slower day. The Disco is in for a service and so it will be a make & mend day for us - plenty of washing to do with a few swims as well I think !