Day 29. Tuesday 16 July 2013.

Still in Darwin and will be for a while yet.

Got up at the usual time and went for our constitutional wander along the Stuart Highway shared footway or bike path if you prefer. Actually there are heaps of these things around the town....leaves Geelong for dead in this regard. We have some good ones but Darwin is really set-up well for commuting from the suburbs into town by bike. Some of the riders even use their bell to warn you of their approach...impressive.

We have decided to do a touristy thing or two today, so we head off to the Kakadu Highway to where it crosses the Adelaide River (not to be confused with the township of Adelaide River which is over 100 k's south of here) to do a bit of crocodile spotting. The family did something similar when we were up here in 1988. That was on a two storey boat but today we have decided to go with a smaller operation and hence a smaller boat.

We left the park at about 9.15 'coz we had to be there before 11. Had plenty of time so we stopped off at a place called Fogg Dam. The dam is really just a low earthen wall with a single lane road over the top. This wall creates a huge wet-land and even now during the dry there is sufficient water about to support a squillion birds.

Wetlands at Fogg Dam.

There is a sign near the start of the dam, that asks visitors to give the wall a break and walk over it rather than drive. However, just a bit further along there is another sign that states that walking across the wall is forbidden due to the presence of a large saltwater crocodile.....hence we drove!

After a quick look at the wetlands we drove onto the place where the croc tour departed. Still got there in plenty of time.

The boat is a glorified tinny really that seats about 30 persons.The sides have been built up to prevent the crocs from actually jumping into the boat and munching on a tourist or two...hope that it is high enough!

The tour guide is a bloke names Harry and he knows where all the crocs are and we have an extremely close look at quite a few. Two of them are great big males, one of which (Brutus) actually smashes into the side of the boat with his head when he misses the meat that is dangled off a pole for him to jump at. Scared the bejaysus out of us. The tour goes up and down the Adelaide River for a bit over an hour. This is a lovely bit of water. A very pleasant journey was had and I would recommend this tour to anyone. The only sad thing is whilst boarding someone lost his prized straw hat when a sudden gust of wind blew it off my head and into the Adelaide River it went....in spite of me having pulled it down as hard as I could prior to getting on the ramp. Nobody was game to jump in the water to try and retrieve it, especially the owner of said hat!

A Jumping Crocodile, Adelaide River.

After the tour we moved back towards Darwin a bit and stopped at the Humpty Doo pub for lunch. This is mining country and the clientele frequenting the outside dining area is salt-of-the-earth in nature and colourful in language. A broad mind was needed but the food was good and the re-introduced Territory Draught was cold and beautiful. I asked for a couple of draughts, expecting to get two pots (middies up here) but got two schooners (bloody big pots according to Darren) instead. One of those was enough for the driver..

The Boxing Crocodile at Humpty Doo...showing its age.

Had a nice quiet afternoon by the pool again. After dinner I challenged Geraldine to a game of euchre. Must have had a brain fade again....got beat up good.