Week Seven Day Forty-Eight and Forty-Nine

Hannibals jaws!!!!!!!!!

Darwin, what a lovely friendly place. We have both defiantly fallen in love with it. We spent the morning wandering around the town, before heading for the wave pool. Unfortunately someone disobeyed the lifeguards and strayed to close to the wall. So the waves were stopped while the lifeguards rescued a teenage girl who had been battered against the wall and half drowned. Paramedics were called and luckily the girl was not to bad at the end of the whole saga.

Now the motel we stayed in was in Mitchel Street. Mitchel Street is where most of the restaurants, bars and backpackers are located. Being St Patricks day as well it turned out to be a fun filled evening. Luckily with the aircon on we were not kept awake all night.

This morning we headed for Jabiru and Kakadu National Park. However our first stop was to the "Jumping Crocodile Cruise". This cruise guaranteed "Salties" (salt water crocodiles) jumping out of the water. Were we impressed or what. Just walking onto the jetty to the boat, you heard this splash not more than 20 meters away, and this saltie comes swimming out from under the shrub overhang.

Hannibal, 6 metre Saltie.

Our second encounter was when we were on the boat. We not only had a 6 metre male saltie, called Hannibal, swimming towards but also a 3 metre female. Luckily for the female, she swam away or we would have watched her being attacked by the male. Wow, this guy was huge you would not stand a chance if you encountered him in the wild. Hold on we are in the wild, what happens if the boat goes down? Lets put it this way, with the amount of crocs in the water, some of us would not make it ashore.


Male saltie.

Anyway meat was held out on a bamboo stick and the crocs lunged out of the water to reach it. Again it showed how vulnerable we really were, because there was nothing stopping him "jumping" onto the boat. It was an impressive sight. Three crocs were fed, with the third being encouraged onto the river bed so we could witness how impressive they are. The first and third were male and the second female. She jumped the highest as she did not carry as much weight as her male counterparts.

Female Saltie.

Then it was time to feed the kites following the boat. This was fun to watch and amazing to see their ability in plucking the smallest bits of meat that was thrown from the boat.

Kite flying for food.

After our exciting morning we headed for Jabiru where we are currently ensconced in an award winning "Bush Bungalow" at Lakeview Park.

Our Bush Bungalow.

Hope's Blog........... Mummy wanted to get a picture of me and the croc on the riverbank, to show how close he was to us. But I did not want to turn my back to him, as he was scary. I also had to take my pink sun hat off as they like bright colours. I did not want to be eaten.