With the ups and downs of Darwin well behind us, we headed out off into the arid wilderness of Australia’s rugged Northern Territory. Unlike most of our other tropical destinations, we hadn’t been able to get down to the beach to enjoy the ocean waves. That’s because people don’t usually go swimming in the ocean around the NT unless they have a death wish.
There are approximately 75 000 Crocodiles residing in the Northern Territory, and although we hadn’t seen any by this point, we were sure keen to! So as we headed south, we pulled off the main route and headed toward the Crocodile Capital of Oz; The Adelaide River.
We hopped aboard the Adelaide River Queen boat and chugged out into the murky water. Within a minute we had spotted at least a dozen crocs surfacing and disappearing along the river and a dozen more along the muddy riverbank and a few which were fighting their way upstream toward us.
As one came near us, the guides brought out their fishing pole with a bloody chunk of pork jaw on the line. The croc swam under the line, lunged up at the hunk of meat and went crashing back into the water below. The guide snapped the line away and the croc missed his prize but this form of teasing actually helps to ensure these enormous reptiles retain their natural predatory instinctual edge for when they are further downstream and the feeding boats aren’t around.
We witnessed at least 10 different croc feedings and it was amazing to see these immense creatures project themselves into the air to catch their prey. We were also intrigued to hear about some of their natural behaviour, cannibalistic activity and even a few stories of close encounters with humans (some lucky, others not so much). But we were really astonished to hear that there have been only about 20 crocodile related fatalities in Australia in the last 200 years. That’s pretty amazing considering these forgotten dinosaurs are spread across a third of the continent.
We continued down the river and we were able to spot a handful of tiny baby crocs that had to avoid being eaten by their brothers, sisters, parents, etc. However, the highlight of the trip was a visit to see “Aggro” the nearly 7 meter long behemoth with only one leg.
We were awestruck to see this monster arise out of the water and terrified to think that only moments ago he was hidden below the water surface. As he shuffled himself onto the riverbank, we saw the three stumps where his legs should have been (one of which was still bleeding) and we had a first hand view of what each and every one of those little cute croc-lets would turn into if they didn’t eat each other off.
We said farewell to Aggro, and headed back to the base camp which was back downstream. Along the way the guides threw the leftover meat chunks into the air and we all watched the hawks swoop down and snatch them out of the air or from the surface of the water.
Then it was time to hop back aboard Old Bertha (our newly named camper van) and head down the long and dusty road and into the Australian outback.