Darwin – Heart of Crocodile Country

But first – March 11 and 12

Our sea days after Cairns should have given us some lovely views of the islands on the far north part of the reef on the first day, but of course the weather didn’t cooperate. Instead we had a gray, rainy day with a few breaks. Here are a couple of photos:

It would have looked much nicer in bright sunshine….oh, well; we’ll have to try again another time.

March 13

Here we are again with the lazy Aussie pronunciations….the locals sort of leave out the ‘r’ in Darwin, pronouncing it more like Dahhhhwin. Wonder what Charles Darwin would have thought. Even though he never came to Australia, and he probably would have loved to investigate the wildlife given the isolation of the area, the original harbour was named after him. A surveyor on the MS Beagle who had been in the crew during Darwin’s journey and had been very impressed with his work named the harbour after him when the Beagle found it in 1839. Just a couple of tidbits for you.

One of the few days where we had planned different tours, but the only one that actually happened. Darwin had been a military base and fuel depot during World War II, and because of its significance to the area had also been heavily bombed by the Japanese. There are still remnants of wartime history around the city, so Larry took the related tour.

Monica did the more touristy thing – went to see the ‘Jumping Crocodiles’. The whole north coast of Australia seems to be the favoured grounds of the Saltwater Crocodile, one of the holdouts of the dinosaur era. These crocs are extremely dangerous and strong – and stealthy – so there are warnings up on every beach to deter people from swimming. Funny thing is that about 40 years ago, they had been hunted almost to extinction just because they were dangerous to humans. When the hunters realized that there were very few left and that it could affect the whole ecosystem if they died out, they banded together and approached the government to have the Saltwater Crocodile declared an endangered species. It has been so ever since, and the numbers are climbing again.

We (that is Monica and the group) met the crocodiles in the Adelaide River, which does NOT run all the way to Adelaide. That city is on the south coast, about as far away from Darwin as one could get in a relatively straight line. It was called the Adelaide River in honour of Queen Adelaide, wife of the English king, William IV. Surprising no one, Adelaide was in fact also named after her.

To get back to the crocs: we climbed aboard our tour boat and were told to UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES put our arms or legs beyond the edges of the boat. Crocodiles have very good eyesight, and would see that as easy pickings. Best let the naturalists onboard take care of handing out the snacks.

The river is fairly wide with a good current, with a tidal swing is about 3 meters that makes navigation a little tricky at times. The crocs don’t have any trouble dealing with this, but the boats have to do a lot of maneuvering to stay in one place.

All of the crocodiles that the naturalists visit on these tours have names. The males have their territories along the river, and will attack and kill any male that invades that territory. They’ve been there for so long that we were given their recent histories if there was something interesting about them.

The first croc we visited was named Knuckles, and he gave us a nice display of ‘jumping’.

See how close we were to those exceptionally
strong jaws???

The naturalists impressed upon us that even though they attract the crocs with food, the small amount of chicken that they get is just enough to replace the energy they use in jumping after it, so their regular eating patterns are not being disrupted and they still hunt for all of their normal food. In fact, a couple of crocs didn’t even make an appearance, probably because they weren’t hungry enough to bother.

We did see, from a distance, a white croc named Pearl. She’s not albino, but her skin doesn’t have the same amount of pigment that the others do. Because she’s so obvious, she has to hide out more than others, so Monica could only get this picture:

We did find another couple of crocodiles willing to jump for a snack. This one is called Casanova:

We also saw trees full of fruit bats – they must be quite large up close, given their size from the boat, but nobody wanted to find out:

…and we had Kites, a relative of the hawk, following the boat for a distance on the way back.

Once we left the Jumping Crocodiles, our tour continued into the Wetlands. This part of Australia is very flat and gets a lot of rain in the rainy season, considering how close it is to Indonesia and the areas that suffer under monsoons every year. We drove up to the top of a hill, the highest point for miles, where the Window on the Wetlands Visitor Centre is located. From there, we had a good view of the extent of the lands that get flooded almost every year. There was no time to stop, as we were headed to the Fogg Dam Conservation Area for a demonstration of some aboriginal traditions.

Much of the Wetlands looks like this in the rainy season. Our
guide said he and his friends used to walk through here
looking for certain plants.....

....maybe there weren't so many of these guys around
then. This is a Freshwater Crocodile, much
smaller than his Saltwater cousins.

As part of the demo on basket and net making, using grasses and reeds, we were all given a couple of leaf pieces to try to pull the fibre out and then roll it. Most of us were not too successful. We did notice that the method used here is almost exactly the same as what we were shown in Rotorua when we toured through the Maori artisan studios: hold a couple of the thin fibres together, roll them down your bare thigh under your palm, roll back up, and then down once more. It makes a very strong rope; come to think of it, fibres are twisted in much the same way by machine nowadays to spin and create yarn.

A demonstration of how to make the rope that was used
to create baskets, nets and bags that were
used to collect food and fish.

Then we were given the demonstration of the didgeridoo. It is much more complicated that you might think. The small tree that is used to make an instrument is not hollowed out after it has been cut down. How would you get to the middle? No, the tree is earmarked, and then the termites are left to do their work, cleaning out the centre over what could be a few years. After the tree is cut down, it soaks under water for 4-5 weeks to rid it of the termites, and then it can be fashioned into the instrument and decorated. Quite a complicated process, and the sounds that a good musician can make are much more varied than the droning 'boing-boing-boing' of the buskers at Circular Quay in Sydney.

This fellow explained the very long process of
making a didgeridoo and what a young man goes through to
learn how to play it properly. Then he played
this one for us.

Back on the ship in the mid-afternoon, we started to organize our packing, as we only had two more port stops on this truncated World Cruise and seven suitcases to pack. And after that, back to our favourite sail-out spot on the ship at the Sunset Bar:

Another day at sea and, almost at the end, we would be in the first port not on the original itinerary – Broome.