Named after Charles Darwin, Darwin is the capital of the Northern Territory and is home to half the Northern Territory population of 200k people. It's also a bit of a frontier town so is pretty secluded, and was set up in the 19th century to stop the Dutch and French getting a foothold in Australia. The reason for our visit though was Kakadu National Park, Litchfield National Park and Nimbuluk National Park. If only someone had told us about the wet season.

The wet season up in the Top End starts in October and ends in March, and in January alone they have 400 millimetres of rain on average. Darwin is also the lightning capital of the world, even though they only have lightning for a few months of the year (Aboriginal legend tells of the lightning man living near Darwin, so certain places are avoided so as not to upset him).

Due to the wet season many of the roads in the Northern Territory are closed, so unfortunately the highlights of Kakadu (Australia's biggest National Park) were inaccessible and the Bungle Bungles (think Helen Daniels) in the Kimberleys were totally closed, but it was still worth the visit for our day trip to Litchfield National Park alone.

Litchfield National Park has a number of crocodile-free waterholes (Aussies love a swim) and waterfalls, and also has termite mounds, some reaching six metres tall and sixty years old (one metre equals ten years), and some magnetic termite mounds also, which look like a graveyard as there are a number of mounds all facing the same direction (hence the name. Scientists have no idea how they know, but the mound's flat faces face north and south and the edges east and west).  But the highlight of the trip was the jumping crocodile cruise on the Adelaide River.

The Adelaide River is infested with saltwater (estaurine) crocodiles (the most dangerous kind).  The jumping crocodile cruise is on a small boat cruising the river, with a person tempting crocodiles with big lumps of meat on the end of string attached to a stick.  The 'feeder' dangles the meat in the crocodile's face, or if uninterested slaps the meat in the water or even in the croc's face, trying to get them to jump out of the water to get the meat.  As the crocodiles now recognise the boat, if they're hungry they swim over to the boat for a relatively easy meal (well, after a bit of teasing and a performance).

After stepping onto our little boat, the driver takes us out to the middle of the river telling us how crocodiles are killing machines, when suddenly we spot our first croc, about four metres in length.  They normally only jump if three metres or less as they're too big otherwise, but it's still quite frightening when you see the size of them, and they're only a few feet away.  If you fell in you'd have no chance!

After taunting the croc with the meat for a while (so the whole boat gets a good look at him) he's fed and we're off looking for the next bite.  Next, a three metre croc swims quickly over to the boat.  Familiar with the game, this croc immediately jumps clean out of the water so you can see it's whole body, propelled by it's tail which is the only part of it still in the water (and only a few inches of that).  After about four jumps the croc is fed and we're off.

Next Hannibal, the oldest and the biggest croc here at six metres and about a hundred years old.  At the same time another big croc is spotted, but waits in the background whilst Hannibal feeds, as Hannibal is the dominant croc in the river.  Crocs often eat their own if less than two metres long.

After Hannibal slowly gets taunted then fed, we find a couple more jumpers and then back to shore, where we're told occasionally crocs walk through the car park.  These things get everywhere, especially in the wet season as the water rises and they move from place to place, making every swimming hole a potential danger.  Just yesterday morning they found a small croc in a local swimming pool in Darwin, and a few days back an Aborigine man running from the police got bitten as he swam across a river.

Definitely one of the best trips we've been on, as normally crocs in the wild will sit on the river bed for hours at a time or you will just see their eyes and nostrils, so it was amazing to see wild crocs jumping up at the boat for food.  Such amazing but frightening creatures.

To top things off we even got to hold a few large snakes back on shore, including a Water Python called Medusa, Neil Diamond the Diamond Python, Olive the Olive Python (Aussies aren't too inventive when it comes to naming things) and a Children's Python, and Rich licked a Green Ants ass which tasted of citrus.  Well as we diced with death on the boat we thought why not wrap a strangling reptile or two round our necks too.