Day 30 – Darwin to Cooinda

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One thing I have omitted yesterday, we tried to find a way to battle the heat in the campervan while not driving. Option 1 was to exchange the camper with one that has aircon, however that was not possible as no other camper was available. Option 2 was to buy a portable aircon, however they are with 40 kg not that portable and also the dimensions were to big to add to our van. Option 3 was to buy a fan for $20 and hope it will be enough, that’s what we did.

From Darwin we headed south and then east towards the Kakadu National Park. The Kakadu National Park is well known for its animal life as well as the gorges and waterfalls. We were quite interested in the first one as this means crocodiles. After about 10 kilometres from the Stuart Highway, there are the “famous” jumping crocodiles. Famous in quotations because it is their own claim and we haven’t heard of it before Darwin. We arrived just past 11 and to kill time until the 1 pm tour decided to visit the nearby Visitor Centre. It had two great things, firstly aircon, secondly some good information about the land, the animals and the culture. For example the termites are not a pest, but lacking any form of big herd animals such as the water buffalos, the termites take the job of disposing of the leaves and other greeneries.

The jumping Croc
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The tour started at 1 pm sharp in the hot afternoon sun. We were quite happy whenever the boat was speeding up and thus providing a relieve from the heat and flies. The cruse was on the Adelaide River just outside of the Kakadu National Park and it is estimated that about 4000 crocodiles live in this area. They are all salt water crocodiles (the larger ones) and can become up to 5 meters (the males). We saw them cruising along the boat and sneaking up behind us. One at a time because they are very territorial and each stretch of a few hundred meters is occupied by another femal croc. The males dominate a much larger area of a few kilometres (jointly occupied by females of course). The skipper asked us to keep any body parts inside the boat. He hooked a piece of meat on a cord and let it dangle just above the water, occasionally letting it plunge into the river. Although the water is very murky and you can’t see more than half a cm below the surface, the crocodiles can sense the movement of water. They approached the boat and the dangling meat and then propelled themselves up, both 2/3rds out of the water and snapped the piece and disappeared. We saw about five crocodiles doing this, including a five meter male croc called stumpy (because one of the front legs was bitten off in a fight with another male. They can reach an age of about 80 to 100 years. Although with about 80 their teeth are not regrowing and thus ones they lose them, they have nothing to heat with. A last amazing fact here in the blog: Sometimes they stuff their prey in the water between tree branches. They wait for other animals to come and pick on the food and then they catch them. In the water they get fish and maybe turtles and ones the water retreats, they get dingos and other land animals. The tour after all was great and we learned quite a bit about crocs and their natural habitat.

It jumps quite high for the pork chop
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We drove on past the town of Jabiru in the middle of the National Park and stopped about 50 km from it at Cooinda. Cooinda has a camping ground and some motel rooms. It also has good facilities with a restaurant and bar. Just after we had our dinner, a tropical thunderstorm started. It is pretty much like in KL. It is hot, then big dark clouds come together, thunder, lightning and then the rains start to pour down. We watched and enjoyed it from the bar where we spent the rest of the evening.