Thursday 12 June 2025

Sunrise at 6.30am has Cherrie showered and dressed and camera at the ready. She catches both the sunrise and moonset

We must finish breakfast by 8am and be out of our rooms by 8.30am. This is because the next group arrives today and their rooms must be ready. It’s back to back touring, this mob, which is fine. Until the roads are closed and we have to fly. Our flight is not until midday, so we have 3.5 hours to sit and wait and do nothing. Not a bad thing to do on a holiday I guess, but a little drive or other distraction would be nice.

While you are waiting, allow me to impart to you an interesting fact about the Yolgnu worldview, Dhuwa and Yirritja. These are the two fundamental moieties that make up all aspects of Yolgnu existence. Everything, including people, clans, languages, land, animals, plants, and even compass directions, is either Dhuwa or Yirritja. They are interconnected and interdependent, like Yin and Yang. Each person is assigned their moiety based on their father’s moiety. A Yirritja is expected to marry a Dhuwa, and vice versa. So, when we were out with Frankie yesterday everything he talked about was either Dhuwa or Yirritja. This tree was Dhuwa and that tree was Yirritja Every fish, every stone, every rock has a particular moiety.

Meanwhile back at the wait….Cherrie and I took this into our own hands, left the seated group glued to their phones, taking advantage of the limited area of reception (the balcony of the lodge) and took a potter around the lodge exterior, steering clear of the runway. Mark, (he’s the one in the drivers seat) still jovial,

noticed us wandering and offered to show us the croc cages. Of course we snapped at the chance. Something to really get our teeth into

These big beggers are helicoptered in and lowered over croc nests to collect their eggs, which have been identified by advance low flying helicopters and GPS recorded. A fool of man is inside the cage, which is cunningly lowered over the nest so that mum croc cannot eat said fool. 80% of the eggs are collected and these hunters reckon they are showing generosity to Mrs Croc since she’s still got 20% of her offspring left. The eggs are flown back to a base where they are carefully kept until they are transferred to a hatchery in Darwin. Big money in those eggs apparently and once hatched the little blighters are allowed to grow to 1.5m before being turned into high end handbags, shoes, etc. Thousands of these eggs are collected each season. That’s a lot of shoes.

We escape from croc stories and wander a little more. The swamp and surrounds are very pretty

The water here is non drinkable as it comes from the swamp and even though it is fully filtered, it’s still very tannin stained. A visit to the toilet before departure provides some amusement, since no colour at all is discernible, other than the brown swamp water. It’s why I choose wine for my hydration

The planes have had a strong tail wind from Darwin and so are ahead of schedule. They land at 11.15am. Of our group of 15, including Greg, 10 are assigned to the 14 seater Caravan, 2 to a Cessna 210 and Cherrie and me, along with Greg, to another Cessna 210. All luggage has been carefully placed on the tractor and our little incoming plane lands after the other two. All three planes are unloaded of the incoming guests who will experience as we have over the past day. They may not be lucky enough to witness the croc cage though.

Yay, we’ve got Julia again. Still, I took my SeaLegs an hour ago, just in case.

Today we are flying to Maningrida, on the Arafura Sea.

It’s only a 20 minute flight but there’s plenty to see

But for the rains, we’d be driving on this road. Maybe flying is good after all. Thank you SeaLegs aka AirLegs

We see the sea

After landing we board what would have been that Merc 4WD van I mentioned in a previous blog. The type of vehicle we would have travelled in had the roads not been washed away. This one is stuck in Maningrida, for it cannot get out. But it’s the bus we use for the next day, and very comfortable it is too. Greg drives us to our home for the next two nights, which was built as a fishing lodge but bought by Outback Spirit a few years ago. It still operates as a fishing lodge during the biting season.

On a short walk down a path, Cherrie bites. In fact, she barks. It doesn’t take her long to document them, in her own visual style

Dinner on the deck, accompanied by the Kookaburras, but very different to those familiar to us

These sweet little things find nothing to laugh about however. They have a rather gravelly, low pitched voice, which sounds a bit like a profanity. Those of you of a certain age may remember Graham Kennedy being taken off air for his impersonation of a crow call. These kookas are impersonating The King (and I don’t mean Charles).

And so the sun sets on another day in the top end