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Published: October 25th 2009
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Humpty Doo signpost
Humpty Doo is a town on the way to Kakadu NP. Wins the title of Most Awesome Town Name Ever in my book! Day 3 - Darwin to Mary River
This morning we packed up early, having been kept awake half the night by possums playing football on the roof of the motel! Kevin wanted to have a look at the B52 bomber on display at the Aviation Museum as it is the only one outside of the US so he took Caitlyn and Brad with him while Nicola and I went into the mall to shop. While shopping, I noticed the National Australia Bank building which I personally think wins the title of Ugliest Building Ever, hands down :-)
We saw less of Darwin than I was hoping to but to be honest, I don't think I could spend a lot of time there. The kids thought it was great but it just didn't excite me, although that was probably because I kept comparing it to Adelaide (my favourite city of all). So, after a bit of lunch at Macca's we headed off towards Mary River/Kakadu. First stop was Howard Springs - since we'd forgotten to take our swimmers to Berry Springs, I thought we'd make it up to the kids by stopping at the place where the US soldiers spent their
Fogg Dam
Driving over the dam wall R & R during WWII. Unfortunately, the blue/green algae had moved in so the place was closed to swimming.
So we drove on to Fogg Dam instead. Dam is probably a slightly optimistic term as it's really just a dirt embankment in the middle of what appears to be a fairly flat wetland area. The signs at the dam state that it is the most biodiverse area on the face of the planet with a couple of billion water rats being chased around by various larger mammals and reptiles. The birdlife is pretty good - we saw Jabirus and jacanas and lots of other water birds and this was in the dry season. Whilst you can drive over the "dam" wall to a picnic area on the other side, you are encouraged by the signage to reduce your carbon footprint and walk across it instead. However, when we were there, they were advising you not to walk across it either due to the presence of a large saltwater croc near the dam wall. It was too hot to do any walking so we decided to move onto the next stop - Window on the Wetlands.
Window on the
Leaning Tree Lagoon
Not much more than a shallow puddle at the end of the dry but still a haven for wildlife Wetlands is an interactive display centre built on top of a small hill which looks over the surrounding wetlands. I think it would be a pretty good view in the wet. The displays are worth seeing though and it's airconditioned inside. The only drawback is that the carpark is a 250 metre walk from the display centre and it's just too hot to walk any distance between about 1pm and 4pm up here.(Note - It's also very close to one of the famous jumping croc cruises and my only regret of the whole trip was not going on one of these cruises as we didn't get to see any crocs in the wild on the rest of our time up in the top end. It was just soooo hot that we didn't really feel like doing anything at all). After Window on the Wetlands, we headed for Leaning Tree Lagoon. Once again, it's probably far more impressive after the wet season but still a very pretty place. It was quite shallow when we were there with lots of wading birds picking their way through the lagoon. We stopped here for a bite to eat and it was quite pleasant -
the flies and mosquitoes don't seem to be as much of a problem as I expected them to be.
The next stop was Bird Billabong - the turnoff to Bird Billabong is about 5km west of the Mary River and is also where Hardies 4WD track starts. I would have liked to drive Hardies track but I couldn't find much info on it when I was researching the trip, especially where it starts and ends so I thought I'd include that information here in case anyone else is looking for it. (BTW, it ends somewhere along the road to Couzen's Lagoon). Unfortunately, there were no birds and no billabong to be seen at Bird Billabong so our little 20km each way detour was a bit of a fizzer. We decided to head for the Mary River Camping Park as there was a pool there at least . We definitely weren't disappointed. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this place - lush green campsites, clean amenities, two pools, a restaurant... but when the sun sets and you look up at the stars, you feel like you're a million miles from anywhere. It's just beautiful! Being so close to the equator, the stars look
very different to the way they do at home and I could pick out constellations I'd never been able to see before.
This was our first night camping and using the equipment that came with the Britz hire vehicle. Unfortunately we found that they had only given us 4 sleeping bags instead of 5 which wasn't a problem in the top end but I was worried about what we'd do as we got further south. Other than that, the camping set up was very good. We had taken our own roof bag with us which we have for our 4WD at home so that our luggage could go onto the roof rack which was just as well because there wasn't much room in the back with all the sleeping bags, pillows, fridge and food.
After dinner, we sat around the fire and looked up at the stars and thought to ourselves that it really doesn't get much better than this!
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