Wednesday – November 7, 2018
We left Ayers Rock early yesterday morning, flew to Alice Springs, toured Alice during the day, and flew to Darwin last night. Jeff and I have renamed this land tour. We’re calling it the “airport tour of Australia.” Darwin is the largest city in the Northern Territory and the most northern city in Australia. The city lived up to its reputation for heat and humidity. This morning it was 85 degrees with 79% humidity. And it’s only spring!
Darwin is a relatively small modern city with a population of only about 140,000 people. Our group came to Darwin to see the Jumping Crocodiles. These saltwater reptiles are the largest and most dangerous crocodiles in the world and they inhabit most of the waters in the Northern Territory. Local advice is: “Swim only in chlorinated tiled pools.”
We drove through a town called Humpty Doo on the edge of the Kakadoo National Park to the Adelaide River. This is a tidal river and crocodiles live and thrive in the brackish water. Our group boarded the blue boat pictured above. Our guides were two young women in their twenties. Kristy drove the boat and Chelsea rode shotgun and fed the crocs. Who knew that in the 21st century Crocodile Dundee was a young 20-something woman?!
The boat slowly cruised down the Adelaide River and stopped. Chelsea hit the surface of the water with her long stick and looked toward shore. We all followed her gaze to the floating eyes which were coming in our direction. Chelsea introduced us to an old saltwater crocodile named “Stumpy.”
At first I thought he wasn’t so big, but then I noticed most of his nine-foot long body was under water. Chelsea held the buffalo bones at the end of her stick above Stumpy’s head. But, Stumpy swam along the side of the boat looking at us.
Eventually Stumpy jumped up out of the water, showing us his strong jaws and big teeth, and grabbed the bones. He swallowed them in one gulp.
We said goodbye to Stumpy and moved down the river and Chelsea repeated her stick call. We saw a smaller light colored crocodile emerge from the shore and swim toward our boat. This was a young crocodile named “Pearl.” Chelsea said Pearl was not an albino crocodile but merely had some skin condition which gave her lighter skin. Unfortunately, this denied Pearl the benefits of camouflage.
Pearl was younger and more agile than Stumpy and jumped high out of the water. The third and last saltwater crocodile we saw was “Casanova.” Chelsea said he was about four meters long (12 feet) and about 15 years old. He was strong and powerful and would be a menace to anything swimming in the river! He made a loud scary growling grunt when he jumped out of the water to grab the buffalo bones.
On the way back to the boat dock, Chelsea demonstrated the agility of the brown kites. These are local Australian birds, larger than seagulls; perhaps about the size of hawks. Chelsea whistled to attract the kites. Then she threw pieces of meat into the air alongside the boat. The birds swooped down, caught the meat in their talons, and transferred the meat to their beaks in the air while flying. What a spectacular show they put on for us!!
Afterwards, we had a delicious fresh fish lunch at a restaurant called Wharf One. I ate grilled barramundi which is the local farm-raised fish. The chef gave a cooking lesson on how to cook barramundi. He made it look easy! After lunch we walked around the harbor to the building which houses both The Royal Flying Doctor Service Museum and The Museum of the Bombing of Darwin Harbour.
The RFDS is the aerial service which supplies doctors and medical needs to remote areas in the Outback of the Northern Territory. It was founded in 1931 and is still active today providing emergency medical services to people in far remote areas of Australia. The airplane below is one of the Flying Doctor’s planes from the 1950s which was set up like an ambulance.
The Bombing of Darwin Harbor was a revelation to me. I have to admit that I never heard of it. The city of Darwin was attacked by the Japanese in February 1942 to prevent the Allied Forces from using it as a base during World War II. It was an surprise aerial attack on Australia and was a great shock to the country. More bombs were dropped on Darwin than were dropped on Pearl Harbor and there were 236 casualties. I don’t have any good pictures from the exhibit but my photo of a gathering offshore storm reminded me of the attack photos.
Jeff and I had a free evening and we found a Chinese restaurant near our hotel and ate “chow mein.” Not the “chow mein” from our youthful days. The next morning our group left for the Darwin Airport to fly to the Pacific Ocean city of Cairns.