Darwin, NT

This is a medium-sized salt water / estuarine crocodile, jumping out of the Adelaide River near Darwin. Quite scary since they like to eat people.

In Darwin we stayed at Hidden Valley Holiday Park. It has lots of trees and grass, the people are lovely, sites are large and there’s an onsite coffee shop, pool etc. It also happens to be under the flight path for Darwin International Airport, which has no overnight curfew.

Darwin seems to be split into two parts, one each side of the airport. The waterfront on the southern side has a wonderful artificial beach and lagoon, the only safe swimming beach due to the saltwater/estuarine crocodiles in the harbour. And, a wave pool plus plenty of waterfront cafés and other eateries: it’s a lovely area.

We were so excited to catch up with our wonderful neighbours from Melbourne while they were also in Darwin.

The Cullen Bay Marina also has lots of restaurants and cafes with fabulous seafood.

Bread is left out for people to feed the fish. One thing that struck us in Darwin was the absence of seagulls. Apparently wedge-tail eagles keep the seagulls away and there are a many of them around. In 2011 the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) trialed them and a number of sporting venues and towns also now use them for that purpose.

We saw what looked like a training session for a Search and Rescue helicopter.

Getting to the museum just before closing time meant only a quick look around.

Mindil Beach Sunset Market is fabulous, as was the sunset .

Mindil Beach Sunset

We can highly recommend the ‘Charles Darwin’ Sunset Buffet Dinner Cruise on the Darwin Harbour.

Thankfully, our ‘Jumping Crocs’ cruise on Adelaide River did not turn into a dinner cruise because it would have been us on the menu. We went with Adelaide River Cruises, which operates on a separate part of the river to the others.

There is a high population of the ‘Whistling Kite‘ bird in this area because they eat the feed from the barramundi farm next door.

Andy, our guide was great, he knew so much about the croc’s on the river. The dominant males had been given names and could be identified by scars.

We were a little worried that the back of the boat didn’t have a safety rail over the steps.

‘Dominator’ is the alpha male on this part of the river. He is about 6 metres long.

This one is named Brutus. He’s about 80 years old and became world famous when he caught and was photographed eating a bull shark. He is missing most of his teeth and his front leg, probably from a fight with Dominator. Apparently, crocodiles anatomy not only stops them getting infections, but also stops them bleeding to death. People have been known to get a small fleck of Adelaide River mud in one eye and end up with two infected eyes, so its amazing that a crocodile can lose a leg and still not get an infection.