One of the things that Philip had on his bucket list was the jumping crocodiles on the Adelaide River. We had been watching advertisements for them for years! I had done a little research to see what was available as a tour but put it in the "too hard" basket as there were a couple of tour companies and I didn't know which one was best. As luck would have it on our journey today from Darwin to Kakadu we drove straight past the tour that Philip wanted to do. And I do mean drove straight past. We had to drive another 5 or so kilometres before we could find a place to turn around!
We pulled up at the Adelaide River Jumping Crocodile tour office around 10am and the lovely lady behind the counter told us that the next tour would be at 11am. Yes please! Two tickets! It was perfect as we hadn't eaten any breakfast so we decided to use the hour to make ourselves brunch - well - a salad sandwich 😁
There are two companies that run tours on the Adelaide River but this one is a family run business that has been operating for a very long time. Their flagship is the Adelaide River Queen that sits proudly moored to the jetty, but today there were two smaller boats for us to chose from. I was a little aprehnesive about the size of the boats in comparison to the size of the crocs that we would be seeing!
Our tour guide kept us entertained with lots of anecdotes as we zipped through the water and it was barely minutes before we spotted our first croc gliding through the water towards us. Our guide stopped the boat, baited up his long pole with a pork bone and started hitting the water to attract the crocs attention. He explained that the crocs are sensitive to vibrations in the water and will always head towards it.
The croc played around the bait for awhile with only its head coming out of the water but once the croc drops its tail down you know it's ready for a big jump. It is actually terrifying when they do that. We are so close to the crocodile that you can count the scales on it's body. Of course everybody walks to that side of the boat that is also a little scary but they are well balanced boats.
We continued down the river and feed another three crocodiles. The females are smaller and one of the female had lost a front foot from a battle with another croc. They all have names. Sooty, Zig-Zag, Blondie and Sunny. The very last croc that we feed was the biggest and oldest at over a hundred years old. They don't let him jump anymore because of his age, but at around 10 metres in length it would have been impressive.
The tour goes for around an hour and a half and well worth the money to be up so close and personal with these giants of the river. We made our way back to the car and van and by this time it was nearing 1.00pm and we still had another 300km to drive.
The highway was excellent with a lot of sections newly upgraded. We zipped past little townships but they were getting few and far between. We passed large wetlands that we think are tidal with lots of birdlife before we came back into scub country that makes up a vast part of Australia. Once again there was lots of country set alight as controlled burns, and we saw kangaroos but no emus. We passed cattle stations with their herds of brahman cattle and one property had a paddock of domestic buffalo.
We finally reached the Kakadu National Park boundary and felt we were getting close to our destination but in fact we still had another 150km to drive. It was a long day and I could see that Philip was tiring. We bypassed the town of Jabaru and turned west towards Cooinda with another 30km to go.
Our final destination is the Yellow Water Camping ground. We were emailed instructions to get to our allocated campsite but it wasn't any easy task to find site 46 in "White Apple" area and when we did finally find site 46 there was no clearly defined site area. We parked close to the power and water and hope that we are in the right place for our five night stay.
Tomorrow is going to be a nothing day. Maybe a little yoga, a swim and book reading. Darwin was very busy so we are looking for some down time before we book a few tours.
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