IT FINALLY HAPPENED!!!!

 It was hard to leave Cobourg, but our permit had expired and we were out of beer so it was time to go. After an overnight stay in a donga, and some good pub grub at Iron Bark Hut, we were once again setting up our camp at Jim Jim Billabong in Kakadu National Park with Dave and Janna.

We spent a day visiting Jim Jim and Twin Falls which was pretty spectacular, and enjoyed a quick swim at Jim Jim Falls. As luck would have it our gas hot shower had stopped working the day before and we were both starting to look and smell a bit like homeless bums - we certainly appreciated a croc free swimming hole that day.

Twin Falls

Another creek crossing

We decided that we had done enough sight seeing and decided to get back to what we do best - FISHING! We launched the boat at Jim Jim Billabong and spent a few days fishing there. We were only catching Saratoga and Long Toms and the Yowie was getting very agitated because he still had not landed a legal barra - let's just say that his mood was not very pleasant......

Belle and Saratoga

Did you know that Ned Kelly was a fisherman???

As we weren't having much luck at Jim Jim, we decided to launch the boat at Yellow Waters instead. It's a beautiful wetland area with an abundance of lilies, birdlife, crocodiles and fish. After navigating through the shallow weedy water we found a perfect fishing spot - we could even see the schools of barra swimming through the clear water. Belle was the first to hook a barra (it was a monster), but after a 'netting incident' the fish was swimming back to his mates to taunt us a little more.

Belle was enjoying the scenery and wasn't paying too much attention to fishing until she heard those three familiar words screamed by an excited Waz "GET THE NET, GET THE NET, GET THE NET". We did not want a repeat of the Daly River Incident, so Belle had the net in the water ready to capture the bloody fish. It was a perfect fish landing and Waz finally caught a legal Barra (all 63cm of it, which is bigger than Belle's Daly River Barra - not that it matters of course). But the important thing is that we can now call him Wazamundi.

Wazamundi finally strikes

Isamundi prefers Z-man snagless soft plastics

Yellow Waters

 Never smile at a crocodile

More Yellow Waters

Wazamundi celebrating his victory

Huntsman on our camper.............

We both managed to catch a few more Barras and really enjoyed exploring Yellow Waters - it really is a beautiful spot. We had arranged to meet our friend Rob (or Mr MacFlip as he is known by his students) for a weekend of fishing at Shady Camp. We packed up and made our way out of Kakadu. As we were passing through some roadworks on the Arnhem Highway we were stopped by the traffic controllers because there was smoke coming from the back wheel on the camper trailer. We couldn't believe that we had done another flaming bearing. We were unable to drive any further, and could not change it on the side of the road because it had welded itself together. Belle drove 50kms up the road and called RACQ (no phone reception) while Waz waited with the trailer. A few hours later we were towed back to Jabiru and the blokes at the BP temporarily repaired it there (we would have to get the brake shues replaced in Darwin).
We didn't make it to Shady Camp and instead returned to Darwin where we got the car serviced, trailer fixed and spent way too much money at BCF. We also did a bit of sightseeing and enjoyed some beautiful Darwin sunsets over a cold beer with Lori.

Lifestyle and Easy Topper getting towed back to Jabiru...

A typical NT numberplate

Waz enjoying some oysters at the Mindil Markets

Nightcliffe sunset

Darwin Harbour

 A Darwin Council worker hard at work....

We packed up on Thursday and made our way towards Dundee Beach where we will stay for 4 nights with Dave and Jana. We also picked up our permit for Channel Point which will be our next destination

Cobourg Peninsula - The greatest place on earth

We left Darwin a later later then anticipated due to a very bad hangover which was the result of a boozy dinner with Lori, Rob and Eva in Darwin City. We spent Saturday night in Jabiru (which is only a few hours drive from Darwin) and enjoyed our last taste of civilization for a while - some pub grub and beers in glass around the resort pool.

Black Cockatoo at Jabiru

We were up bright and early the next day with 2 full fuel tanks, heaps of jerrys and enough beer and food to supply a small country for a month. The first significant obstacle was the infamous Cahills Crossing on the East Alligator River. It was low tide so the Cruiser just ploughed through it without any drama. The drive through the first part of Arnhem Land was amazing; lush green wetlands and lagoons in front of beautiful rock escarpments. Another highlight was a small creek crossing, there was nothing difficult about the crossing, but the creek was choc-a-block full of Barra. Waz got very excited and we nearly drove into the creek because his attention was focused on the Barra and not the concrete road....  I guess he is only human.

As we were nearing our destination, we came across a vehicle pulled over on the side of the road. The young couple were having some difficulties with the strap on their boat, but waved us on as they had the situation under control. Four and half hours later, we arrived at our destination Garig Gunakbarlu National Park aka Cobourg Peninsula. We set up camp after navigating our way across the crocodile crossing and before you could blink we were enjoying a cold beer and a yarn with our new friends who were not grey nomads who we had met on the side of the road earlier that day.

We knew that our trip was off to a good start when we pulled in two good sized coral trouts while trolling along reefs close to the boat ramp. Dave and Janna were kind enough to invite us out on their 5 metre boat the next day and we were able to fish further afield and visit Victoria settlement. We had a great day and caught heaps of fish. Giant Trevally, Giant Herring, Queenies and Mackerel - just to name a few........ We didn't end up doing the 3 hour walk at Victoria Settlement as the fishing was too good. We decided that we would come back and do the touristy thing another day.

mmmm two coral trouts - caught by Belle (not that it matters who caught them of course)

double hook-up

 

80cm  Giant Herring

Waz and his big GT

What a fish..... Jana with her Queenie

 The next few days we were blessed with beautiful weather and we spent the majority of the time fishing and caught loads of good fish. Hooking Cobias on poppers from the back of a giant Manta Ray was definitely one of the highlights - even though we didn't manage to land one of the big beasts.

Waz likes long walks on the beach and poetry....

Got sick of sunset photos so here is a sunrise - what a tough life......

 The only negative of the trip occurred on our second last day when Dave and Janna's boat ran into some mechanical problems. We were 10km from the boat ramp when the engine made a loud boof, started to smoke, and then stopped all together. Luckily Dave was able to start the motor again, and we didn't have to swim back to shore in the croc/shark infested water. We later found out that it was the alternator and it is going to be a very expensive repair job.

Dave's luck didn't improve that day when he managed to impail himself with two hooks right up to the barb while unhooking a barra. Luckily Dr Yowie was able to perform some micro surgery with large pliers and remove the offending hooks. While Dave and Waz were busy removing fishing in the easy topper, Belle and Janna were busy collecting shells and disturbing disgruntled crocodiles on the beach - Never a dull moment at Cobourg!!!!

We know that we have said it about a few other places before, but we really mean it when we say that Cobourg is definitely our favourite place so far!!!! If only you could swim in the crystal clear waters without being taken by a croc it would be perfect!!!!

Caimen Creek

Manta Ray

Hard day at the office

Isamundi strikes again

Our overnight stay in Katherine was fairly uneventful and it's not the sort of place that we really want to visit again. We treated ourselves to a night in a hotel and the woman who ran the joint was a real old bag -that was until Belle paid a few compliments to her pet cat who hung around our motel room. The old bag quickly turned into a sweet old lady who liked to tell us cute stories about her little feline. Katherine had a good tackle shop, and a decent Woolworths, so we were able to stock up on the essentials and make our way to Daly Waters.
There are a whole heap of places to stay on the Daly River, but decided to stay at the Mango Farm as we had heard lots of good stories about this place. We were greeted by a nice young man who was as camp as a row of tents which is quite odd for the NT outback (they are usually pig shooting, beer swilling Red Necks). After being interrogated about our maritial status and future plans for children we were soon setting up camp for the next four days.

some snakes in the dunny - they don't scare us any more.

The next morning we put the boat in and hit the river with Barramundi in mind, as the Daly is renowned as the best spot to hook a Barra in the Territory. It is also (as we soon found out) well known for its extremely high population of large Salt Water Crocodiles (insert scientific name here). Unlike their relatives in the Gulf, these crocs are not boat shy at all and we often found ourselves in close (but safe) proximity to large salties sunning themselves on the bank or cruising up the river very close to our boat. On our first morning out we saw roughly 60 crocodiles and about 10 of those were larger than the boat.

This croc was BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIG

 But the croc trap is even bigger................

Fishing was a little bit slow, but Isamundi/Barabelle broke the drought with a nice 60cm Barra. Before you could say 'pan-fried barramundi with garlic butter' Waz had dispatched the fish to the ice-box. Unfortunate for Waz he was only able to boat Rat Barra (Belle is going to give him a few pointers before we hit the Cobourg Peninsula).

Isamundi strikes again 

conversion

We had noticed that there were a lot of cherabin (fresh water prawn) pots out and had heard from various people that these were the gun Barra bait (and were good eating). Luckily we had purchased a few pots in Katherine and the next day we were pulling out some pretty decent sized cherabin (tasted delicious with a bit of garlic).

mmmmmm

Waz was super keen to get a legal Barra after the Isamundi event, and this nearly came to fruition on our last day. He loudly lamented the fact that he still hadn't caught a legal Barra on the trip and was admitting defeat when the strike came. A good sized Barra fought all of the way to the boat, jumping all over the place. However one final leap saw it gain its freedom seconds before being netted into the boat. 'Oh Fiddle Sticks' said Waz (or words to that effect) 'what a blasted shame'. The day only got worse when some old codger ran over his trolling line and took all of his braid and favourite lure. When Waz lost two more lures to concealed snags we decided that it was time to get him back to camp and pump some cold beer into him before we had an 'incident'..........

All in all, we had a great time and we will definately go back to the Daly River as it was a top spot but we had to pack up and leave as Litchfield National Park was calling. We decided to tackle the 4WD track into the park, this was a beautiful drive, but was quite challenging in some spots. We navigated a few tricky creek crossings (see below) which were pretty steep and long in places, but we made it through without incident and were back on the 'Black Top' pretty quickly.

ant hills

We passed a shirtless man who must have been in his late sixties wandering aimlessly down the road. We stopped to see if he was ok, but when he asked us where he had parked his car we thought that he may be a little disorientated. We explained that the car park was just down the road and gave him some water and pointed him in the right direction and were on our way. Ordinarily we would have invited him to jump in the back of the car, but we had just finished reading a book about a man who was beaten and dumped in the desert after helping what he thought was a stranded tourist, so we thought that it was best to let him walk the 500 metres down the road instead.

Not long after that we were setting up camp with Lori and Eva at Pethericks which is a privately owned campsite right on Cascade Falls. We didn't do a lot there, but enjoyed swimming in our own private water hole and thermal spring and exploring some of the local attractions (Wangi and Florence Falls). We were unable to secure a campsite in Darwin because the Darwin Cup was held on Monday, so we ended up booking ourselves into the Camp Site at Howard Springs, which is about a half hour drive from the CBD and a pretty good park. We have spent the day organising bits and pieces and spending up big at 4WD and camping shops - we even gave the car a well overdue wash. We will leave Darwin on Friday and make our way to Cobourg Peninsula - we can't wait..............

Wazabel at Wangi Falls

Lori and Eva looking serious (serri)

The Cascades

Emu on the side of the road

Florence Falls