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Happiness Is The Road
After brekky we left the Darwin Free Spirit Resort which should have more appropriately been called the Darwin Mind Controlled Sheep Resort! We had enjoyed visiting Darwin. It's a wonderful laid back albeit mad hot place but we were glad to get away from the caravan park. We went to Coles on the way out of the city to stock up. Whilst in the supermarket looking at the sausages and desperately trying to find some that didn't contain sugar a little old lady sidled up next to us and said loudly to herself 'typical why wasn't that on offer yesterday?'. There was a piece of meatloaf in the chiller reduced to nearly half price.She then spoke to Jay and said 'you want to get one of these love, you can cut it up, put it in the freezer and it feeds me for a month'. Jay said to her 'We'd love to but we haven't got an oven 'cause we live in a campervan'. She patted Jay's hand and said 'that's a shame love' and wandered off. We weren't sure if she meant it was a shame that we lived in a campervan or that we didn't have an oven! We left the meatloaf where it was as it had sugar unnecessarily added to it. We had to leave the sausages too. The food industry it seems are intent on poisoning the sheep. With the shopping done we headed out of Darwin and through the wonderfully named town of Humpty Doo in the direction of the Adelaide River. We had booked ourselves onto a jumping crocodile cruise. It was only about 60 kilometres from Darwin and it didn't take us too long to get there. This was our chance to safely see the most dangerous reptile in Australia, the huge saltwater crocodile or saltie. Jay is terrified of crocodiles and was very apprehensive of what was to come. It was very brave of her to get on a boat on a croc infested river. When we boarded the boat we had a choice of going downstairs behind glass or the open upstairs deck. We went upstairs! As soon as the boat set off we could see crocodiles swimming towards us in the murky waters of the river. They looked very graceful in the water. The boat soon stopped and they got the pork chops out. They had a large rod with a long piece of rope on it. To the end of this they tied the pork chop and hung it over the side of the boat in the water to entice the crocs. When a croc got right up to the chop they pulled the chop out of the water. In order to get it's viscious chops around the chop the croc would jump out of the water and grab the food in it's menacing huge jaws. It was an incredible and exciting spectacle to see. They sailed down the river and did this numerous times with many different crocs. They knew them all and told us their names, Rice Patty, Aggro etc. Despite the wet season being over there was still an awful lot of water in the river and the area was teeming with wildlife. We saw a solitary pelican on the water up ahead that was either very brave or extremely stupid. Luckily it moved before it was eaten. There were a lot of wallabies in the area and sometimes they get eaten by the crocs. They go right up to the waters edge to drink. The crocs notice this but don't make their move immediately. The problem is that they go and drink in the same place at the same time each day and the crocs take note. By the fourth day the croc is ready and will launch itself out of the water at frightening speed giving the wallaby no chance of avoiding becoming the crocs dinner. There are also lots of birds including hawks or kites as they are called in the Northern Territory. There were heaps of them flying around the boat when they dangled out a piece of meat for the birds to swoop in to get. Along with eagles it is the hawks that we always see when driving sat on top of the road kill feasting. The cruise lasted for an hour and was very enjoyable. Jay especially was glad to get back to the safety of the shore immensely relieved that she hadn't become meatloaf for the crocs! We had a coffee and then headed down the road towards another river, the croc infested Mary River. We stayed on the caravan park at the Mary River Wilderness Retreat. It was a great place set amongst the bush but a bit too close for Jay's liking to the river. There were lots wallabies here all of whom seemed to sensibly stay away from the water. We had to get up to pee in the middle of the night. It was pitch black outside when we ventured from the camper van. Just before we turned the torch on to see the way to the amenities we heard two loud thumping sounds close by. Jay **** herself! She thought it was a crocodile thumping it's scaly rear on the ground. We must have smelt like a great big value pack of meatloaf! Torch on..... and relief all round as it was infact just a couple of cute wallabies thumping around and by the looks on their faces they were more **** scared of us than we were of the imaginary crocodile!
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