20/6  V8 Supercars rolled into Darwin. 22 semi trailers in a convoy followed by a dozen or so official cars. Blasting air horns all along Stuart Hwy, quite a sight.

Head towards Kakadu NP and stop at Mary River Wilderness Retreat. Run by people from Lakes Entrance. Book unpowered site near the River for 2 nights.  Drive to The Bark Hut Inn (2 kms away) as we want to book a cruise and there is no reception at Mary River. Obviously should have been there last night.

  It’s 30+ so back for a swim in the nice pool and happy hour on the verandah with a couple from Tasy.

21/6 Up early for an 8km walk. Travel through a variety of terrain. Bamboo forest, billabongs open woodlands and along the river. Lots of different birds -  parrots, kingfishers, hawks. Heard some bellowing and thought it may be buffalo, but came across a few Brahman cattle. The place is crawling with wallabies. Walking along the river bank you would think it was the Murray. Apparently the Mary River is fresh water with a sandy bottom, whereas other rivers in the region are tidal and have muddy banks. Also the Mary River has the highest concentration of crocs, both fresh and salt, in the world. Despite this we didn’t see any. Back to the pool to cool down. Because it’s so hot and you can’t swim anywhere as you could at Litchfield, might be tempted to stay at places with a pool. Drove back to Corroboree Tavern to do a sunset cruise on the Corroboree Billabong.  The Tavern has a couple of buffalo, wild boars and crocs in cages. The salt water croc is about 5 meters long. He’s massive. The cruise was really interesting.  Plenty of birds, including Jabiru's and some crocs.

Big salty about 4.5 meters just cruised along beside our boat. He wasn’t the least bit intimidated by us.

Students from Maffra Secondary School arrived to spend the night. Travelling in the area for a week.

22/6 Decide to stay another day and drive into the Mary River NP. 100km round trip. Couzens lookout was a misnomer, couldn’t see much due to trees in the way. Next stop, Rockhole, was very similar to Corroboree Billabong, in fact may have been the other end. Mary River cruises leave from there. Up to Shady Park (not much shade). Interesting spot.  A barrier has been built to stop tidal salt water going upstream. Small fish school on either side, and Barramundi move upstream with the tide to feed on them. Quite a few people fishing. I had a go and hooked a couple of small barras, and had my line cut by a couple of bigger ones (didn’t actually see them). They have razor sharp protrusions on their gills. Three quite big ones were caught while we were there. They have to be between  55 cm  and 1 mtr to keep.  Stopped at Mistake Billabong, which was well named, as not much to see. However the real mistake was Bird Billabong. We drove in to find it was a 4.5 km walk from the carpark and the walk was closed anyway. Why don’t the put the closed signs at the beginning of the road in, not at the end. Mary River Billabong on the way back looked really nice, although not as open and easy to see as others. I had a couple of casts, but the pool and happy hour ($3 beer and wine, $4 Guinness) beckoned.

23/6  Drove to Jabiru. On the way we crossed the West Alligator river and saw a big croc sitting on the bank.

Jabiru has an nice bakery, although the Buffalo pie was a bit salty.  The Mercure Crocodile Hotel is quite impressive. Obviously shaped like a crocodile with rooms around the outside and pool in the centre. Went to the visitor centre, as we had to purchase park passes for $25 per head. Quite a bit to see there including a move on Kakadu.  Had a nice meal at the caravan park restaurant which is next to the pool. Vindaloo lamb shanks for Rose and stuffed mushrooms for moi.

24/6 Drove 20kms to Malabanjbanjdju. Billabong and walking track. Pretty billabong with a 4mtr salty sitting on the bank. 

Went to do the walk but surprise- the track was closed. Back to the billabong and the croc was no longer sunning itself on the bank. Which meant we had no idea where it was. We were a bit tentative walking around bird watching after that. After lunch headed up to the East Alligator River area.  Stopped at Cahills Crossing, where a week or so ago a woman’s car go washed away while she was driving across and she was rescued by a tour boat. Crocs apparently gather at the change of tide. We only saw one. Then on to Ubirr. Some amazing rock formations.

Sandstone slabs look like they have been stacked on top of each other. Due to a lot of burning off it was quite hazy which made for a very orange sun. Lots of rock art sites, supposedly many thousands of years old. 250 climb to the top of an escarpment for a great spot to watch the sunset, along with at least a hundred other tourists.

Spooky drive back in the dark. There is burning off all around the area so there was lots of smoke and quite a lot of flame visible.

25/6 Back out to Cahills Crossing to catch the high tide which is supposed to be the best time to see the crocs come in to fed on fish moving upstream. Had a fish for a couple of hours, but no luck again, and only saw a couple of crocs.

There was a couple fishing in a very small tinney which seemed to be tempting fate, although they did catch a good sized barra. We did a really nice walk through the sandstone country and back along the river. Some of the formations are absolutely stunning. Pretty hot going and unfortunately nowhere safe to swim, so had to come back to the pool at the park.

26/6 Planned to have a lazy day around the pool, but ended up driving down to Muirella where there is a campground and a walk. Walk closed (becoming an annoying habit) due to buffalo in the area. Drove along 4x4 track into Sandy billabong which was quite large, but not a lot of birdlife. On the way back called in at Nourlangie. Quite a few different spots to go to in here. We only did a short walk around the rock art galleries. The art itself was nothing special but the rock overhangs the were painted in were amazing. Was going to cook chicken for tea but Rose saw the menu at the restaurant and that ended that idea. Chilli seafood fettuccini for her, twice cooked duck for me. Definitely ate too much seeing we didn’t have lunch until 3pm. A Ranger talk on buffalo tonight was very interesting. They were introduced by the British from Indonesia as a food source for a northern garrison. When the poms left they released about 90. At one stage there were 10’s of thousands roaming through the wetlands. Overseas tourists were encouraged from the 1920’s to travel over for big game hunting – buffalo and crocs. Buffalo don’t seem to be a major problem, but thousands of feral pigs.