We woke after a slightly cooler but no less buzzy night to Matt’s phone alarm going off at 5:30, unfortunately for our neighbours we couldn’t find it for a whole minute.....oopsie. The sunrise cruise actually consisted of four large barges so there were heaps of peeps waiting to get on at the pier. The safety talk was hilarious with our guide assuring us nothing would happen but he had to show us the lifejacket procedure anyways- mentioning the greatest benefit it would serve would be to shove the jacket in the croc’s mouth and swim for your life. Gotta love the Territory! He then went on to gleefully let us know there were about 350 crocs in the region we were about to cruise. Incredible to discover that in the wet season the wharf floats at the top of the poles which were about 4m high. A beautiful sunrise and we saw some smaller female crocs straight up, but our guide was into bird life and other interesting facts about Kakadu, the crocs ended up being a sideline. Luckily our ornithologists had similar interests and were engaged (bar the youngest) for the whole time, we saw some gorgeous kingfishers, one who caught a fish, and pretty much every waterbird we have seen so far in incredible abundance all hanging out together sprinkled with the odd mob of feral pigs and water buffalo and of course crocs lurking underneath it all. We saw about 10 all up and our guide told us for every 1 we can see there’s another 7 we can’t. Fascinated by the Jabiru who relentlessly ‘jab’ their prey- including baby crocs, the male Jacana who roosts and looks after the chicks as they grow up (some of whom are eaten by fish) whilst the larger and more impressive female flies away to find another mate, the ? Birds who mate for life and die of distress if they are ever more than 4m apart. This was an amazing experience, hard to condense the abundance into words, just that we’re so glad we made the effort to get up early. We knew there was breakfast included but didn’t realise it was a full hot buffet job back at the Yellow Water resort- that was certainly the icing on the cake, Thomas excelling himself in the value for money stakes putting away 10 croissants.
Feeling very content and full of beautiful images of our cruise, we set off for Jim Jim Falls. A 4wd only track so hopeful not to encounter as many crowds. Lots of 4wds in the car park however and a few overland trucks, we passed a lot of people coming out so that was good. For a 1km track it was very slow going, lots of clambering over large boulders reminiscent of El Questro. We knew the pool would be freezing and it was, it beat Stu and I, but the rest swam over to the falls, it was spectacular enough just looking around at the huge cliffs.
We finished the day and our stay at Jabiru with a swimming dinner at the poolside bistro. There happened to be a croc talk afterwards which kids enjoyed immensely, Stu was hard to drag away from handling the big estuarine croc skull. Back to the trailer for another hot humid night’s sleep.