Day 3: Not having Christmas in Humpty Doo

What a Christmas!!

I decided to go for a short drive around Darwin and ended up driving for more than 500km. The scenery was spectacular. I had planned on a day in Humpty Doo (the nearest town to Darwin - according to my map). The web makes Humpty Doo sound particularly exciting. Apparently "The plan [by CSIRO] was to irrigate the subcoastal plain of the Adelaide River and produce a commercial rice crop. The theory looked good. The practice was a total disaster." I arrived in Humpty Doo at about 9:30am and then left again, after seeing all the sights (i.e. the boxing crocodile) about 2 minutes later. This was rather terrible as I'd planned to spend most of the day there. Oh well, I set off toward the Djunkbinj National Park with the plan of doing a few bushwalks and then returning back to Darwin.

The driving was fun. Slowly all the radio stations disappeared (the last going was the BBC World Service) until it was just me, the road and wetlands on either side (with a few huge termite nests every now-and-then for company). I passed a car coming the other way approximately once every 30 minutes.

I crossed huge rivers (all called something like "West Crocodile river", "East alligator river", "Large crocodile creek" etc.) and there were signs everywhere warning me that I'd soon be eaten.

Discovering that you could only get into the Djukbinj National Park with a 4WD, I headed on towards the Mary River National Park. This park was beautiful, but again to get into the park I needed a more manly vehicle. So I kept going ... for another couple of 100 km ... and then reached the Kakadu national park. Wow! Because of the amazing (and accessible) waterfalls, termite nests and hikes, the Litchfield National Park was initially the most spectacular, but the Kakadu park just keeps going on and on and on. It's huge (half the size of Switzerland according to Wikipedia).

Oh, an aside. I forgot that I stopped for a coffee at the Annaburroo Billabong where I chatted with an Aboriginal guy for ages about all sorts of things. We were standing next to a huge (live) crocodile that was behind a fence and he was explaining how one bit his uncle when his car broke. He also told me the names of various animals in his language (which I'm shamed to say I've forgotten) and told me to respect the human bones. He told me this quite a few times and I assured him that I would.

A one-armed Aboriginal chap then came up to me and tried to ask me the time by pointing at his non-existent wrist on his non-existent arm. That was confusing, but we sorted ourselves out after a while and after bidding each other Merry Christmas, I went on my way.

I was hungry by this point (having now missed breakfast and lunch), but kept moving East through the wetlands. There were kangaroos and wallabies everywhere. At one point, I felt like I was playing a dodgem game with these small red, furry bouncing creatures. I didn't hit any. I also just missed squashing a huge brown snake that decided to cross the road in front of me.

The amount of wildlife was incredible. There were huge eagles above, large water birds in the swamps, kangaroos everywhere, dingoes walking past, lizards on the road, parrots in the trees, buffaloes in the distance ...

I stopped at the Aurora Kakadu Resort on the "South Alligator river" because I'd spotted a sign for a bush walk. The walk was superb, but (I must admit) did make me a little nervous on my own. As far as I could tell (by the huge spider webs across the path) nobody else had been on this walk for a very long time. There was also a huge booming sound coming from the forest (which I can only explain by some very large bird nearby), there were lizards everywhere, lots of signs told me to beware of and not go near: 1) crocodiles, 2) dingoes, 3) kangaroos, 4) horses or 5) eagles.

I hope that some of the photos can give you a sense of what the walk was like (except you won't get to feel the humidity, flies or mosquitoes). The creature that, on first glance, looks like a black snake (in the photo below) is actually a turtle of some type! The billabong was beautiful and the area around was simply covered in wildlife of all types.

















Oh dear. I really don't know how to describe the scenery. Maybe I'll just say that it was hot, humid and amazing! In no particular order (certainly not in the order that I saw them) the photos below (or to the side - I can never work out where "blogger" is going to put them) are of some fungi that I spotted growing on a tree, two different species of butterfly (this is the first place that I've been to in Australia where there are lots of butterflies), a weird lizard that just sat watching me, two correlas in a tree and a huge cane toad (that I almost trod on).

































































After my walk I decided to keep driving a little further East before turning around to drive back to Darwin. I'm glad I did decide to keep going. The weather was perfect, the road was exciting (lots of holes to dodge with a 130km/hr speed limit). For most of the way the road was raised above the floodplain below. I stopped every-so-often to take photos of the magpie geese or cranes that were standing in the water. There were some rather strict signs (in English, German and Chinese!) telling me not to get close to the crocodiles.






























I kept driving until I reached the Mamukala Wetlands. So beautiful. A large bird-hide had been built in which I spent rather too long watching the storm clouds build in the distance and magpie geese flying around. I then went for another lovely walk around the lake. By this time I was hot, hungry and tired and so decided to turn around and head back to Darwin before the storms hit.

I didn't make it!! Driving home was dramatic. I kept getting swamped by huge rain storms that reduced visibility to basically zero and the wind pushed my car from side-to-side. I stopped at a road-house at about 3pm for Christmas lunch. All they had to offer me was an orange muffin (which admittedly tasted very good).


I got back to Darwin in time to visit the fish feeding. This is where milkfish, mullett, catfish, batfish and various rays (I spotted a shovel-nosed ray) come into the shallows to be hand fed. A huge batfish came and nibbled at my toes.

Afterwards I went for a swim in the hotel pool and then decided to have Christmas breakfast, lunch and dinner all rolled into one. I headed out looking for a pub that was open. Unfortunately I failed. I walked all around Darwin to discover that my choice was between Domino's pizza (to eat in my hotel room) or something from a seedy-looking cafe. I chose the cafe. Christmas dinner was a leg of chicken (ate without cutlery), fried rice and a soft drink.


What a wonderful Christmas!!

HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL.