With half of Kakadu still to open
for the dry season we had covered all that we could so we headed towards
Darwin. On our way out of Kakadu we visited the visitor centre (not ideal I
know) and had a chance to learn a bit more about the area. We then trundled
back to Jaibaru to get some essential supplies, had lunch again at the local
park and headed off.
We made it to our campsite mid afternoon and after setting up went to investigate the fishing opportunities.
Couzens Lookout Camp is on the Mary River which apparently had the highest
concentration of salt water crocodiles anywhere......in the world!!! My hope
was that there would be a nice 3m high rocky bank that we could cast our lures off....wrong. All we could see was
trees. There was a bit of a lookout so we knew there was a mighty river beyond
the foliage but I wasn’t ploughing through it! There was another camper so the
boys and I headed to see if he knew of any other local sites we could try. He
was a friendly old bloke from near Tamworth and he was happy to show us the
small track in front of his site that led to a nice grassy flat area on the
river bank. Great..so we ran back to the truck and got our gear!
As eveidenced by Jack’s effort at
Gunlom Falls he is terrified of crocs and old mate had shared with us how many
he has seen and a couple of the near misses he had experienced over the past
few days. Despite his fears Jack followed us down and we set up our camp chairs
10+m from the bank. I knew I had to be near the bank to cast so I took an extra
chair and placed it infront of me as I went to work, my theory being that the
metal in the camp chair may work as a sieve when a croc inhales it and me with
it hopefully deciding I don’t taste very good. After about 3 casts a lure I
recognised it to be useless as the bank was covered in weed and I was on the
verge of a mental breakdown due to the fear of being so close to the river.
Plan B came into action when old
mate came down and offered us some power bait stlye goop to use on our lines.
We ‘baited’ two up and waited, the best part being that we could be the full
10m back from the edge while we fished!!!! Just across the river we spotted a
pretty good size croc that I knew was checking us out at a distance. He
appeared to be heading away from us which was good news. I had a hit and after
few minutes passed it over to Sam. It wasn’t long before he was on and did a
great job bringing it in, the only problem was that dear old dad had to then go
down to the waters edge to drag the flipping, flopping splashing piece of croc
attractant onto dry land. I wish we had a video of it as I am pretty sure we
would have won funniest home videos the way I ran from the bank like a startled
cat!
Regardless Sambo was delighted
with his catch, but unfortunately it was to small so after a quick pic it was
left to fight another day.
We fished for a while longer with our main fun now
being croc spotting. We soon enough
discovered why the other croc had headed away from us as now there was a
MASSIVE croc eyeing us off directly on the other side of the river. I had a
good look at the zoom lens and my guestimate was he was as least 4.5m.
Thankfully he must have been on a diet as he stayed on his own side of the
river!
 |
| Half of him is still under water! |
The sun was starting to think
about setting, which i believe means dinner time for crocs, so we packed up and
headed back. I began to bring my line in when it got very heavy and a little
barra put on a quick aerial display for us before spitting out my flavoured
piece of goop! Satisfied we headed back, and had a quick dinner before packing
the sand bags, rolling out the barbwire and digging ourselves in for the fight
of our lives against an even bigger onslaught by the local mozzies. It wsn’t
long before we were all inside and after a few nights of hearing the mozzies
attacking our screens we took our defense to a new level lighting mozzie coils
INSIDE the van! It worked an absolute treat keeping them from finding their way
in, but more importantly keeping their zzzzzzing away from our windows. It
would have been a perfect method except De and I were coughing and hacking like
pack a day smokers for most of the next day.....
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