Advertisement
Published: November 24th 2017
Edit Blog Post
Crocodile
Good close-up right? Taken from about 50cm away. The views we had of crocodiles today were superior to those of yesterday! Our tour with Litchfield Escape included a Jumping Crocodile tour on the Adelaide River. Boy did they jump once baited with some raw chicken meat! This tour had only about 14 people on it, so the tour on Paddy’s flat bottom boat was kind of like a private tour. There are only 4 licensed operators of such tours involving wild crocodiles, other operators use captive animals on their own property. Although the boat had steel railings to about 2 meters above the water level, we learn that this would not be a barrier should the animal actually want to get into the boat to get to us. We were told as long as we did not stick our hands outside the railing, that the croc would have no interest in us, in fact would not even know we’re there. Just to be sure though, Paddy packed a pistol and a huge knife. Just check out some of our pictures, there’s no place on earth where a person can get that close to these killing machines without being, well .... eaten.
Between the croc jump and Litchfield we
Crocodile
Going for the bait. pass through some amazing farmlands, mostly mangoes but lots of other fruit as well, started by mostly Asians, including a lot of Vietnamese refugees from the Vietnam War. They are determined and hard-working!
There are many foreign workers in Darwin, mostly in the oil and gas sector. They make very good money and save most of it to take back home. Still, it has driven a huge building boom and suburbs are popping up all around Darwin. Employers mandate that workers use the Park-and-ride facilities provided by them on the Buslink VIVO (vehicle-in, vehicle-out). The fear is that the steeply increasing prices will eventually bust, leaving many unused houses once these people leave. We sensed a discontent among Australians about these FIFO’s (fly-in, fly-out workers). Additionally, the Aboriginees are adamant that the uranium mines be closed, that there be no fracking, and that the oil industry is not environmentally sustainable. They have been winning many of such battles, so we will follow this into the future to see what happens.
Anyway, back to our tour. Just after arriving at Litchfield, a Northern Territory Park, we stopped for a photo opportunity with the giant termite mounds. Really a phenomenal
Paddy
He grew up on this river and is part Aboriginee. He understands crocs well and considers them part of his family and therefore cannot hunt or eat them. civilization of its own when you learn about these relatives of the cockroach (they’re not ants). How the mounds can be as old as 50-100 years, how the queen can live 25 years, how one of the reproducing group (there are also fighters and workers) will go through a metamorphosis upon the death of the queen to become the new one, how they build air conditioning in the mound to maintain a constant 32C temperature, how they make the building material from their saliva and excrement into hard rock that resists frequent floods and bush fires, and how the ant is their predator and frequently invades the mound and takes over.
We swam in three different water holes, Wangi Falls (where we also had a great picnic), a private little creek getaway (forgot the name), and Buely Rockhole. Awesome!
Thanks to Joey our driver and guide, great guy, kept all of us excited all day long! This tour had much more value for money than the AAT Kings tour yesterday!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.05s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 11; qc: 27; dbt: 0.0245s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb