Thompsons Travel Oz: Darwin

20th August - 26th August 2014

Yay we have arrived in Darwin and shops! Our supplies are running quite low after one week in Kakadu. We decide to stay at Darwin Free Spirit Resort which is the most expensive place we have stayed so far. It has a very welcoming pool and bar area though!

We need to do a few "maintenance" things while we are here. The car needs a service and the boys desperately need a haircut! We get all the boring things done and then venture out to the Darwin museum. It has a great section on Cyclone Tracy which gives you a little understanding of what those involved went through. In a sound booth there is an actual recording of the noise of the cyclone, quite scary!

We went to the Fanny Bay Goal which was only shut in 1979. The laundry section of the prison was demolished during Cyclone Tracy and never rebuilt. In a separate section of the goal was the gallows, quite an eerie site seeing the hole in the floor! That afternoon we needed to cool off so we went to a free water park in Palmerston.

The following day we headed off early for our Jumping Croc cruise on the Adelaide River. It was a small family operated business with a limit of only 30 people on the boat. There was only about 14 on our cruise so it was very intimate! We headed up the river to find some crocs! It didn't take too long and we found a 4 metre male saltie! Our tour guide Harry, put some buffalo meat on the a stick and held it overboard for the croc to jump up and get! Very up close and personal! His most famous and biggest crocs on the river are "Brutus" a 4.5 metre male croc 90 years old and "Dominator" a 5.5 metre male croc 80 years old. We were lucky enough to see both of these crocs, although Harry was a little concerned as they were too close to one another and this could cause a territorial fight among the huge crocs!

Brutus is famous in these parts for his spectacular jumping ability, some even deeming him to be fake! I can assure you he is not!! Only a few weeks earlier Brutus had stunned tourists when he caught a bull shark and had a feed! A tourist photographed the amazing scene and was approached by Getty Images. They bought his picture for USD $25,000. We got some awesome photos and video but not enough to fund our holiday! Josh and Ash loved this cruise so much they wanted to do it again!! Only 30 klms upstream a few days earlier a man had been taken by a croc and had died. The croc was known as "Michael Jackson" as he had a whitish head. The fisherman was trying to untangle his lure from a rock when the croc struck. The croc had to be shot which was quite upsetting. The croc warnings are everywhere and some people still take the risk.

After a big morning on the croc cruise we spent the afternoon at the Leander water park with the Willo's celebrating Keely's 5th birthday. Big and little kids had a great time on the very cool water slides!

The next day we went into the city and checked out the waterfront area. There was a few navy ships docked up at the wharf. Stuart and Josh went in to the WWII oil tunnels which they found quite interesting. We then stopped off for lunch at Cullen Bay.

Darwin was a very busy stop and we still didn't get to see everything.

The Gallows - the big drop!