22 - Mary River National Park

22 – July 2016 - 1/8/16

We slowly packed up at Litchfield N.P. ignoring all the people hovering around our site waiting to pounce on our bit of ground. Once we were packed we just had to have another dip in the waters of Wangi Falls and it was still quite early when we finally departed. Steve drove out of the site, Mary checked nothing had been left behind and there was another vehicle into our site before Mary had walked the 10 metres to our vehicle.

We had made a booking at the caravan park Steve’s brother was staying at in Darwin as a backup contingency plan in case we hadn’t cross paths with them earlier. So once again we caught up with one another and one planned night turning into two nights at the caravan park.

In Darwin it is easy to acquire all those little things we desired with the pantry and fridge restocked along with a few additional acquired wish list items.

We even managed to catch up with fellow travellers Bruce & Chris at a local pub for lunch and they were in company with Bob & Christine whom we met at Home Valley Station on the Gibb River Road. It was terrific catching up with such friendly people.

We were finally on our way to explore the most publicized location in the Northern Territory, Kakadu National Park. We had been hearing a lot of negative comments from other fellow travellers with the standard phrase, “Kaka-don’t”. It seemed the publicity hype building up people’s expectations and the reality didn’t match. Unfortunately for us our arrival at this location coincided with two dry wet seasons in a row. At least we were prepared not to be dazzled by vast areas of magnificent scenery.

Travelling the Arnhem Highway to Kakadu National Park, located about 150 kilometres from Darwin, we did stop to view some of the other publicized highlights along the way.

First stop was at Fogg Dam. The dam was dry and nearly lifeless. You could see its potential and it would be good to see it at its peak appearance.

Fog dam would normally be covered in water as far as the eye could see, but not when we visited.

Fog Dam walking platform

Fog Dam walking platform

 Next along our route were a few jumping crocodile cruises which didn’t tempt us as we had experienced this phenomenon previously.

Window on the Wetlands located on the highest point of the Adelaide River floodplain had some interesting displays with the magnificent view reiterating how dry it presently was. It was an interesting stop.

Lots of these about

We don't like them

We pulled into Leaning Tree Lagoon for a look and didn’t get out of the tow tug due to swarms of march flies engulfing our vehicle windows. We have never seen such a high concentration of biting march flies and didn’t stop for any longer than a minute, even with a tiny bit of water present in the lagoon.

The bird lagoon in the Mary River National Park didn’t look inviting to tempt us to participate in the 2 hour walk through the dry scrub in the 34 C temperatures. We contemplated spending the night at Mary River Wilderness Retreat which had an attractive setting but appeared to be near deserted with the few people around the smallish swimming pool all stop talking to look at us as if we would be invading their privacy.

Bark Hut Inn located about 100 kilometres from Darwin was mainly a pub with a large area out the back for camping in a bush setting which had a more appealing setting for us and when we enquired about staying the night we were sold on this location as the first nights camp was free. Even the pub area was presented in an attractive setting.

From Bark Hut we deviated off the east bound Arnhem Highway, travelling north through some of the Mary River National Park.

Mistake Billabong an allegedly dry season permanent water body was covered in dry grass with a couple of Jabiru’s sighted standing near the far bank. A dingo appeared from the scrub trotting past the Jabiru’s into the long grass and we got to see some additional birds flying out of the dry grass previously unsighted thanks to the dingo.

After travelling about 55 kilometres we arrived at our targeted Mary River National Park destination, Shady Camp located near the Mary River. All the trees around the campground were full of noisy cockatoos and we were expecting to be woken early complements of the cockatoos. When in the caravan during the day we quite often had to turn on our music to drown out the headache producing noise from the cockatoos. The volume had to be turned up bloody loud, way more than our normal level of volume.

Shady Camp is the location of a barrage preventing saltwater entering the freshwater wetlands and the freshwater was near level with the top of the barrage. We immediately spotted a couple of crocodiles in the water near the barrage.

Barrage in front of fishing boat with crocodiles cruising nearby

A couple of times each day we walked to a crocodile viewing platform located on the edge of the Mary River about 400 metres from our camp site resulted with a sighting count, ranging from 29 to 35 saltwater crocodiles within minutes of arrival and we had no idea how many were submerged in the water watching us. Mid-afternoon seemed to be the optimum time for viewing more crocodiles sunning out of the water. It was a very exciting encounter on our first visit which didn’t diminish each additional visit and would be the most salt water crocodiles we had seen in the wild. All of the crocodiles were sighted within an area of about 100 to 400 metres from the campground.

We ventured down to the barrage at night with the torch. It all seemed really quiet. We shone the torch around and spotted so many glowing sets of bright eyes turned our way. Wow! That was really freaky; we didn’t feel that comfortable standing out there for long. There were about 20 pairs of eyes watching and waiting. It was time to go right then, and we skedaddled.

There was a constant presence of fishermen on the barrage and a few boats launching from the nearby boat ramp, all trying their luck to catch a barramundi. It possibly was a bit more crowded than normal due to it being another long week-end but luckily the campground was still reasonably quiet.

Sunning on the barrage first thing in the morning

All of these pictures were taken from the crocodile viewing platform or from the barrage when no crocodiles were present.

Crocodile viewing platform

A conversation with the local ranger provided positive information about the local attractions. Some of their recommendations were the Jimmy Creek Monsoon Forest walk which turned out to be an enjoyable walk. As soon as we ventured into the forest we could feel the refreshing drop in the air ambient temperature.

Jimmy Creek walk

The rangers recommended drive along the Wildman 4WD Track produced some unwanted striping along the side of our tow tug. It travelled through some different types of terrain and we came across a few billabongs at various stages of drying out.

One of the billabongs we made our way between the bushes to obtain a view of the water watching the ground and the water’s edge for any hazards. We saw some movement on the ground a couple of metres away which showed we had stepped past a sunning crocodile which provided us with an all mighty shock. Luckily for us it was the less aggressive fresh water crocodile which just happened to be our first sighting of the fresh water species over the last couple of days.

Scary when you don't see them

We were unable to get close to any of the other several sighted water areas but we could see plenty of different varieties of bird life in the distance.

The ranger also recommended doing one of the local Mary River wetland cruises as the scenery was quite different to the wetland cruises at Kakadu. We participated in a Mary River Wetland Cruise which departed from Rockhole Billabong.

We thoroughly enjoyed this cruise where we got even closer to the wildlife. The below pictures portray best what we saw.

 

Couzens lookout and camping area looked nice but all the land was reasonably sloped. For us Shady Camp was a great location with a large flat camping area and the added bonus (unexpected by us,) plenty of crocodiles.

And for our parents concern about our safety with plenty of man eating crocodiles within 100 metres of our caravan there was a thick tree barrier along the water’s edge and an enclosed protective wire fence along the edge of the campground!