We don’t do many ‘paid’ things but
we had heard that the croc tours on the Adelaide River were a must. There was a
9am tour so we even set an alarm and were away before the gray nomads were out
of their brunch coats! We tore along back to the Kakadu Highway and when we got
into range we discovered my estimates were off by about 20 minutes! Oh well we
said and pulled into a pub/caravan park, which is very common in this neck of
the woods, and had a look at their FREE display of some water buffalo and
‘wild’ pigs as well as a 2m freshie and 3.5m salty. Happy with the outcome we
drove on so we could make the 11am show....I bet you were all thinking that I
was suck a tight arse that we didn’t do it!!!
We pulled into the ‘windows on the wetlands’ discovery centre that unfortunately was strikingly similar in its content to the last three or four centres we have visited. It did however have a poster that showed us all of the little blighters that had been attacking us and I am pretty sure I recognised each and every one of these!
We then headed down to the Spectacular Jumping Crocodiles Cruise (there are about 4 of them and the ladies specifically asked if we were posting anywhere to make sure we included the ‘spectacular’ part of the name as that is only way to differentiate them) nice and early to be sure we got the best seat. With about 15 minutes to go they bought out a file snake for everybody to have a hold of and while the boys were pretty Ok with with holding it I was amazed that De happily (well happily isn’t quite the right word but we will leave it at that) to hold it, just long enough for me to take a pic before it was handed back.
Pretty soon we were on the boat right up the front, where we had been told was the best spot. We took off and it wasn’t long before we had a taker a nice 3+m girl. She was a bit lazy and did a couple of good jumps but managed to steal the ‘bait’ before the handler got the required amount of work out of her (that is supposed to equalise the amount of energy gained from the meat so she doesn’t become obese from the 4 daily tours). Not far up the river we found “Stumpy” a 4.5+m male croc who is missing one of his legs. He was gigantic! Even sitting on the boat he was so colossal that you couldn’t help but being nervous. They managed to get him up onto the bank so we could have a good look at him and then back into the water for a few jumps. He is a bit lazy so his jumps weren’t as spectacular and the previous one but when he swiped sideways at the bait and his jaws slammed shut the clap that they made was like thunder!
It was around this time that the nice lady doing the driving and providing the commentary let us know that a crocs favourite things are kids....they look just the right size and anything wearing red or orange. Now today is the first state of origin match so we had dressed appropriately wearing the closest things we could find to our team colours....Jack and I, bright red and Sambo Orange. While she wasn’t sure she was pretty confident that having us at the front of the boat may be helping them to put on such a good display. We managed to get three more crocs to dance for us with a 3m girl doing some awesome leaps. They also fed the kites as we cruised between crocs. All in all it was an awesome cruise and well worth the money!
Happy and satisfied we headed to Darwin stopping in Humpty Doo (I had to write that as it must be the coolest name for a town in the world) to get some bread before grabbing some supplies and heading to Dunc and Lizzies in the afternoon. We were excited to be a Dunc’s for a raft of reasons, not limited to the following...Dunc has a shed full of motorbikes and the boys both want to get one as soon as they can, their son Connor comes to visit us a couple of times a year and the boys idolise him, I was looking forward to catching up with Dunc for a beer or two as I haven’t seen him in 1 ½ years and we were going to be in a house for 5 nights!!!!
It must have been 10 seconds and we were into a cool drink and Dunc, who must be one of the better sledgers in the country, and I were into each other. I pale into insignificance up against him but what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and gives you a few new lines! The rest of the afternoon was spent playing in Dunc’s man cave with the boys climbing over the line of bikes like circus monkies. My only fear was that one of the bikes is a MX Grand Prix (or something like that) bike and is worth more than my house and I could imagine the boys finding a way to smash it up!
We retreated out the back for a super yummy curry that Liz had on the boil all weekend and settled in to watch the state of origin game. We managed to imbue a cocktail of beer, red wine and rum as we cheered on the mighty maroons as they endeavoured to keep the state of origin series alive by losing the first game...again ;-)
It was around half past that we retreated with the knowledge that enough may have just been enough!
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