Last night we had a lovely time down at the Mindil Beach sunset markets. It was a warm night and the boys all enjoyed their mango smoothies. The prawn and chicken kebabs were pretty good too. It was very busy so I hate to think what it would be like during peak season in a couple of months time.
I found the Aboriginal ladies selling the beautiful woven pandanus baskets and I bought one. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find anyone offering a workshop on how to make them.
This morning we headed east from Darwin to Corroboree Billabong on the Mary River for a wetlands cruise. We were in a small metal boat with about 15 other people and the first thing we saw was a good size croc. The boat comes with life jackets but if you end up in the river you have a better chance if survival if you just swim for your life.
Our guide took us down the river and through the lotus into the billabong. We saw sea eagles, egrets, darter, brolgas and jabaru! As well as that small bird with the huge feet that walks on the lily pads making it look like it walks on water, known as the Jesus bird. They are very small birds and we found one with its clutch of eggs on a lily pad. It wasn't sure that easy to photograph. It was a really great cruise and I was glad we did it as we're not going into Kakadu.
We then drove west back to the Adelaide River. There are lots of operators running 'jumping crocodile' cruises. There must be a lot of well fed crocs on this part of the river. The tour we chose was on a smaller boat so we could get a lot closer to the crocs and was further down the river past Fogg Dam. Adelaide River Cruises is run by Morgan. King Gees, stubbies, thongs, a killer moustache, he's truly one of the locals and a runs a great cruise. He knows and has named all his crocs on this stretch of the river. Four times a day they get fed buffalo meat off the end of a stick, and all they have to do is jump for it. Sweet life. Apparently a lot of the females were still sitting on their nests but we did find The Dominator, a 5m male. Brutus was no where to be found but Morgan thought he might have been recovering from a croc fight.
We were not disappointed. The crocs did jump for their dinner and a couple of whistling kites came down for a feed too.
Morgan let the boys drive the boat which they thought was pretty good.
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