Northern Territory – Definitely Croc Country!

In my opinion, the Northern Territory is as Australian as it gets, A massive chunk of tropical land filled with wetlands, snakes, Bushmen rocking Barmah hats, massive crocodiles and two seasons – wet and dry.

As with most travellers headed to the Northern Territory, we used the city of Darwin as a launch point for our adventures. The city itself doesn’t boast the majestic allure of other Aussie cities but has a rough charm nonetheless, and is surrounded by the some of the most beautiful parts that we saw in the country. If you drive one to three hours outside of Darwin you encounter two amazing National Parks, Litchfield and the famous Kakadu – if you have seen footy from an Aussie tourist commercial, no doubt some of it was filmed here.

THE WET SEASON

Hitting up Darwin in the wet season is awesome – yes it rains everyday, actually it fucking POURS everyday. With water comes life, and although soggy the place is greener than the Joker’s asshairs and every waterfall flows harder and faster than a beer down Frank the Tank’s beerbong . Besides being wet, the season has another downside – if you are planning to hit up some of the swimming holes in Kakadu and Litchfield, they will likely be closed because massive saltwater crocodiles have access to areas they normally wouldn’t in the dry season.

I don't know whats worse - this, or 'don't feed the bears'

OUR OPTIONS

I love reptiles, and while in Aus I knew I needed to see the king of reptiles: the estuary/saltwater crocodile. There is no better place to do this than the Northern Territory – hot, humid, wet and beaming with food sources, it is a crocodile Shangri-La.

We had the option of going to Kakadu or Litchfield, but since we only had one solid day in before we left for Singapore we decided to do Litchfield as it is a much closer drive, less time in the car = more time to explore.

The odds of seeing a crocodile in the wild are pretty high I’ve been told, but I wanted to get up close and personal without getting eaten alive. We dug up a one day, small group Litchfield tour that included a croc cruise. Our guide was awesome – the quintessential Aussie – teeth darkened from smoking his filterless, hand rolled cigarettes, Barmah hat, no fear demeanour and an amazing array of knowledge of the area.

Trying to spot some crocs on the river

CROCODILE CRUISE

The tour started with a rip down the Adelaide river – the perfect place to not go for a swim. Apparently there are over 1500 crocs in the river, so it was a perfect place to take a dinky little boat out and entice the crocs with some lamb chops. About 5 minutes after boarding the boat we saw our first croc – a female, almost 3 meters in length. She came up and chomped the meat that our guide was dangling from the stick with ease. Awesome I thought, my day was already made and we were 10 minutes into it.

After another half hour of no sightings I was starting to get bummed – I wanted to see a monster, and although the first croc was amazing and beautiful she just didn’t display the raw power I was expecting. Literally 5 minutes later we stopped because our guide saw something, as we were floating around we heard a loud BANG! as a massive organism smashed against the boat and actually shifted the boat. Holy shit – we were in for a big one, and right after the bump against the boat our guide shouts “It’s Nero!”. Nero is a big, big saltwater crocodile and is known as the king of the waterway we were cruising on. Encounters with him are fairly rare and he hadn’t been seen for 3 weeks prior to this sighting. At 6 meters and 1000KGs this was the beast I was yearning to see. His head popped up about 3 feet away from me and I could see our guide wasn’t messing around – this was the biggest organism I have ever seen in the wild. The guide strung up some lamb meat and got Nero to shift out of the water, every time he attempted to get the food our guide moved it away. Nero would sink into the murky depths of the Adelaide River only to suddenly burst up and breach the water with ferocious power that I have never seen before. The boat sits so low that you need to keep your arms, legs and head away from the edge of the boat because you can easily become the crocs next meal if you aren’t paying attention, our guide later showed me a video with Nero attempting to get him instead of the lamb chop. Needless to say I was absolutely stoked, after we took the boat in, I talked to our guide and he said that the largest saltwater croc ever found and recorded was 7.1M so Nero was a big mamma jamma to say the least. Stay tuned for some seriously cool video footage…

The first female croc we saw lurking away

Nero: KING OF THE RIVER

For more AWESOME and I mean AWESOME croc pics, click here!

LITCHFIELD NATIONAL PARK

Litchfiled is the smaller of the popular national parks but spectacular nonetheless, this was our next stop on the trip. As we drove to the park we got hit by a Northern Terriroty monsoon and we were driving through a wall of water, it’s impossible to describe but really cool to experience. Anyways, we hit up some massive termite mounds that were 15 feet tall and about 50-60 years old – I didn’t even think they lived a year but whatever. On the way back to the van the guide showed me an ant that bushmen eat to soothe sore throats – he popped one back so I did the same. The little yellow body excretes some kind of weird acid that numbs your throat – kinda like sucking on a Halls, just a little squirmier.

Try stomping on this termite mound

Like any amazing park, Litchfield is home to some absolutely incredible waterfalls, something we have quickly become obsessed with. Wangi is the most popular and during dry season you can swim in the crystal clear waters which would be a wicked good time, but the crocs were out in full force so swimming was closed. We hung out took some pics and were off to the next waterfall – Tolmer Falls – which is Aussie red rock with beautiful tones of red contrasted with the lush green forest – postcard material. The last waterfall we stopped at was also a popular local swimming hole – unfortunately it was closed due to the massive currents the wet season brings with its torrential downpours. If you are coming to swim in the Northern Territory, better wait for the dry season (and after they hand pluck all the crocs out of the known swimming holes).

Our Litchfield experience ended with a dip in a calm inlet of a fresh water, croc free river, the warm water was a great way to end an awesome day and our 5 week stint in Australia. If you are going to the Northern Territory to take in some Australian beauty, you wont be disappointed, apparently the place is drastically different in both seasons, so you could easily visit the place two times and get a unique experience each time – next time we come back it will be during dry season. If you are headed there seriously watch for the crocs – someone gets eaten by them every year and they definitely don’t give a shit if human flesh is not normally on the menu!

Jackie taking a dip in croc free waters (apparently)

Definite crocodile country...my saying for Queensland and the NT

Wanna check out some pictures from our crocodile cruise? click here, and we will keep you posted with footage from episode 5!