Days 1 – 5.
Alison had her heart set on us coming up to Darwin, to celebrate her birthday, so we set about packing for warm weather and left Sydney for the far north.
We arrived at Darwin airport about 1.30am and the kids picked us up to head for their unit at Frances Bay.

We slept a little late and got up around 9am to head for the Botanical Gardens for brunch.  This is a nice venue to enjoy the plants and wildlife as well as the delicious food. A popular place, by the looks of it.

It was a lovely morning and I had on a T shirt, shorts and thongs, which in hindsight wasn’t the correct attire for the rest of the day.

The family all decided to head out of Darwin, to Fogg Dam, as there was a lot of birdlife and a fat freshwater crocodile there on some days, so off we went. Had a great time there and the place was teeming with birdlife.

We kept heading out along the Arnhem Highway, towards Kakadu and arrived at a roadside swamp where the herons, egrets, terns and a multitude of other wading birds were feeding on fish.

Unfortunately, an egret met its doom on Chris’ UHF antenna, at 130kph. Took some photos and Chris took us to Leaning Tree Lagoon Nature Park, as the billabong was covered in water lilies. We couldn’t really get too close to take photos, as the water was too high.
Chris decided to drive us around the boundary fence and come in from the back, to see if we could get in closer. It was all looking good, but we still couldn’t get near, so he decided it would be faster to keep going around the fence line and come back out on the highway.
Well, we got bogged and tried to winch out, all to no avail.

After a while, Alison and Beryl walked out to the highway and managed to flag down a 4wd. They unhitched their boat and drove all the way around the fence line to try and get us out with snatch straps and winch. No joy there either. The kind samaritan’s battery died and there were now two vehicles stuck.

Alison went back out to where Beryl and the boat were and flagged down another 4wd. It was now dark but they managed to find us and got the guy started. There was no way the Prado was coming out that day, so after the other two vehicles left, Chris decided to lock up and leave it in the mud until the following day.
The heat, sandflies and mossies were driving me crazy, so I walked in the pitch black towards the highway, just being able to make out the fence line in the dark. Shorts and thongs now come into play, and aside from the biting insects, frogs, green tree ants, cane toads and other things plopped onto my bare feet and legs. I must admit though, that the thoughts of Brown snakes, Taipans and Death Adders were higher on my list of concerns.

Found the girls and discussed our options, whilst waiting for Chris to join us. We had been on our feet for five hours at this stage and had finished our water, ages before. Chris arrived and we then attempted to get someone to drive all the way out and pick us up. There were no bus stops or cabs in the vicinity. After a number of calls, we were relieved to find a friend of Chris’ was able to come, but we still had to stand in the dark for over an hour and at the mercy of the myriad biting insects, which seemed to love the aeroguard. We discovered that Chris also had 25 litres of water in the car, but no-one was going back in to get any.
It was a relief when Stuart finally pulled up and took us back home. He was also kind enough to go through Maccas so that we could all get a meal and something to drink. Flopped into bed around 11pm that night, after an eventful first day of our holiday.

This morning, Chris tried to organise someone to recover his vehicle and we eventually found a towing mob who could do that. It took them half a day and they laid out 300 metres of winch line and half a dozen max tracks with each metre gained. $800 later, it was freed.
Meanwhile, Alison, Beryl and I went to Crocosaurus Cove in Darwin city, to have a look at some pretty massive mud lizards.

This is the place where you can hop into a perspex tube and be lowed into the crocodile enclosure with a monster. Lots of gouges and scrapes on the outside of the container, so you can swim with Bert the croc, if you so desire.
Spent a couple of hours there and saw the rest of this ‘mini zoo’. It was quite good.