{"id":14549,"date":"2018-11-07T04:55:44","date_gmt":"2018-11-07T09:55:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/?p=14549"},"modified":"2018-11-19T02:04:09","modified_gmt":"2018-11-19T07:04:09","slug":"darwin-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/?p=14549","title":{"rendered":"Darwin, Australia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wednesday – November 7, 2018<\/p>\n

We left Ayers Rock early yesterday morning, flew to Alice Springs, toured Alice during the day, and flew to Darwin last night. \u00a0Jeff and I have renamed this land tour. \u00a0We\u2019re calling it the \u201cairport tour of Australia.\u201d \u00a0Darwin is the largest city in the Northern Territory and the most northern city in Australia. \u00a0The city lived up to its reputation for heat and humidity. \u00a0This morning it was 85 degrees with 79% humidity. \u00a0And it\u2019s only spring!<\/p>\n

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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. \u00a0These saltwater reptiles are the largest and most dangerous crocodiles in the world and they inhabit most of the waters in the Northern Territory. \u00a0Local advice is: \u201cSwim only in chlorinated tiled pools.”<\/p>\n

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We drove through a town called Humpty Doo on the edge of the Kakadoo National Park to the Adelaide River. \u00a0This is a tidal river and crocodiles live and thrive in the brackish water. \u00a0Our group boarded the blue boat pictured above. \u00a0Our guides were two young women in their twenties. \u00a0Kristy drove the boat and Chelsea rode shotgun and fed the crocs. \u00a0Who knew that in the 21st century Crocodile Dundee was a young 20-something woman?!<\/p>\n

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The boat slowly cruised down the Adelaide River and stopped. \u00a0Chelsea hit the surface of the water with her long stick and looked toward shore. \u00a0We all followed her gaze to the floating eyes which were coming in our direction. \u00a0Chelsea introduced us to an old saltwater crocodile named \u201cStumpy.\u201d<\/p>\n

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At first I thought he wasn\u2019t so big, but then I noticed most of his nine-foot long body was under water. \u00a0Chelsea held the buffalo bones at the end of her stick above Stumpy\u2019s head. \u00a0But, Stumpy swam along the side of the boat looking at us.<\/p>\n

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Eventually Stumpy jumped up out of the water, showing us his strong jaws and big teeth, and grabbed the bones. \u00a0He swallowed them in one gulp.<\/p>\n

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We said goodbye to Stumpy and moved down the river and Chelsea repeated her stick call. \u00a0We saw a smaller light colored crocodile emerge from the shore and swim toward our boat. \u00a0This was a young crocodile named \u201cPearl.\u201d \u00a0Chelsea said Pearl was not an albino crocodile but merely had some skin condition which gave her lighter skin. \u00a0Unfortunately, this denied Pearl the benefits of camouflage.<\/p>\n

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Pearl was younger and more agile than Stumpy and jumped high out of the water. \u00a0The third and last saltwater crocodile we saw was \u201cCasanova.\u201d \u00a0Chelsea said he was about four meters long (12 feet) and about 15 years old. \u00a0He was strong and powerful and would be a menace to anything swimming in the river! \u00a0He made a loud scary growling grunt when he jumped out of the water to grab the buffalo bones.<\/p>\n

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On the way back to the boat dock, Chelsea demonstrated the agility of the brown kites. \u00a0These are local Australian birds, larger than seagulls; perhaps about the size of hawks. \u00a0Chelsea whistled to attract the kites. \u00a0Then she threw pieces of meat into the air alongside the boat. \u00a0The birds swooped down, caught the meat in their talons, and transferred the meat to their beaks in the air while flying. \u00a0What a spectacular show they put on for us!!<\/p>\n

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Afterwards, we had a delicious fresh fish lunch at a restaurant called Wharf One. \u00a0I ate grilled barramundi which is the local farm-raised fish. \u00a0The chef gave a cooking lesson on how to cook barramundi. \u00a0He made it look easy! \u00a0After 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.<\/p>\n

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The RFDS is the aerial service which supplies doctors and medical needs to remote areas in the Outback of the Northern Territory. \u00a0It was founded in 1931 and is still active today providing emergency medical services to people in far remote areas of Australia. \u00a0The airplane below is one of the Flying Doctor\u2019s planes from the 1950s which was set up like an ambulance.<\/p>\n

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The Bombing of Darwin Harbor was a revelation to me. \u00a0I have to admit that I never heard of it. \u00a0The 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. \u00a0It was an surprise aerial attack on Australia and was a great shock to the country. \u00a0More bombs were dropped on Darwin than were dropped on Pearl Harbor and there were 236 casualties. \u00a0I don\u2019t have any good pictures from the exhibit but my photo of a gathering offshore storm reminded me of the attack photos.<\/p>\n

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Jeff and I had a free evening and we found a Chinese restaurant near our hotel and ate \u201cchow mein.\u201d \u00a0Not the “chow mein\u201d from our youthful days. \u00a0The next morning our group left for the Darwin Airport to fly to the Pacific Ocean city of Cairns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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. \u00a0Jeff and I have renamed this land tour. \u00a0We\u2019re calling it the \u201cairport tour of Australia.\u201d \u00a0Darwin is the largest city in the Northern Territory and the most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-australia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14549"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14579,"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14549\/revisions\/14579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}