Darwin/North End
Friday, May 25, 2018
We left Kununurra mid–afternoon on Friday and landed at Darwin, Northern Territory, around sundown. We stayed in the city for the night. The Northern Territory is in a different time zone, 90 minutes earlier than Western Australia.
Here is our flight path, 273 miles/440 kilometers.
Here is a map of the Northern Territory showing some of the places we will be visiting. Darwin Airport has the red airplane symbol. Double clicking will expand the map.
The next morning (Saturday), we drove down to the Territory Wildlife Park (blue pin with an animal under a roof).
The collection of birds was broad and colorful, but many were (of course) behind netting, so the photos didn’t come out well. However, we did get a few good photos and even one of a resting wallaby.
Not all of the creatures at the Park were warm and fuzzy. Australia has a lot of reptile species.
Leaving the Park, we drove on to our room at the Wildman Wilderness Lodge (since closed), where we will stay for three nights. On the map, it shown by the white house/dark blue symbol.
The area around the tents always had wildlife walking around. Here is a typical view with agile wallabies right by the rooms. Also, the next photo shows a baby in its mother’s pouch—they were just a few feet/meters from our room.
The next day, Sunday, we drove about 180 kilometers to Nourlangie Rock in Kakadu National Park. It is the black pin (location approximate) on the map.
There is a short trail that goes through places where Aboriginal inhabitants painted pictures on the rock thousands of years ago. Some of the painting has faded, and some is still clear.
The trail winds its way underneath amazing rock walls.
We didn’t get a tremendous photo of Nourlangie Rock, due to the sun’s angle. Here is our best one. The Park has a lot of great, rocky sites.
The Park is heavily forested.
We drove back to our lodge and did a short walk by a billabong. There were lots of birds! The water feature was also eye catching.
We pressed on, back to our lodge. Late in the afternoon, we took a one hour tour of the Mary River wetlands (they are more extensive than the famous wetlands in Kakadu) on an airboat. The airboat took us places that could not be reached by any other means. (Tomorrow morning, we are going to take the old, slow boat out; it’s docked and on the right side of the photo.)
We had not gone far when we saw a crocodile swimming in front of our boat.
Birds did not like the airboat! They were always flying away from us.
In a bit, we saw two mammals introduced into Australia a long time ago. They are viewed now as problems. The first picture shows water buffalo and the second, a wild pig.
We had seen a lot of flowering lily pads on our trip. The boat guide said they are native to Australia.
Heading back to our lodge, we saw the same crocodile again.
Not long after getting back to our lodge, we had another great looking sunset.
The next morning, our last, we took a slow boat tour in the same general area as we saw with the airboat. This morning’s boat was very slow and quiet, and the birds did not fly away as we approached.
This bird has just caught a fish in the river and has flown with it back up into a tree.
Here are two more fine looking birds.
As we approached our lodge at the end of the slow boat tour, we got a good view of the river without a lot of plant material growing in it.
Next, we checked out and drove back to Darwin Airport for our flight (1,957 miles/3,150 kilometers) to Sydney—dinner with friends—and then on to home the next day (7,861 miles/12,651 kilometers).
We flew to Darwin from Kununurra and stayed the night in the city. The next day, we drove to our remote lodge in Mary River National Park, where we were well situated for walks along trails. From our lodge, we also drove east into Kakadu National Park to look at amazing rock formations. We departed for Sydney on Tuesday May 29th.
