Argyle to Darwin

From the Bungle Bungle (I admit, I just like typing that so keep bringing it up; it's even more fun to say than to type--try it!), we had only one stop left in Western Australia: the Ord River Dam, which creates the striking Lake Argyle. There are supposedly freshwater (so, not aggressive) crocs here, but we didn't see any. It was mighty pretty, though.

 

And then finally, after nearly a month in the great WA (which, if it was its own country, would be the 9th largest in the world!), we crossed the border into the Northern Territory, our 7th of the 8 states of Australia.

I had to stop the van and stand next to this boab to give you some perspective on how absolutely enormous it was.

When darkness fell, the only overnight parking area we could find was this little pull-out next to a pedestrian-only bridge over the Victoria River, gorgeous at sunset.

There were some Perth-Darwin long-haul truckers stopped in the same spot for the night, and when we pulled in they were fishing and they generously let us use them as our evening's entertainment. Everything they said was funny. This is them trying to put the fish caught closer to the camera so that it would appear larger in the photo than it actually was.

After another day of driving, we reached the Adelaide River, where the big attraction is the "jumping crocs." These are now salt-water crocs--so, very aggressive and not animals you want to mess with. These are the creatures that make it hazardous to go near water--even the ocean--anywhere in northern Australia. This jumping crocs cruise is very programmed, but I have to admit I totally enjoyed this hour-long boat outing in which our spirited captain taunted more than half-a-dozen wild crocs with meat to get them to jump into the air for us. Wowzers. This bad boy was about six feet from me when I took this picture, no joke. Keep your hands and head inside the boat, people!

We also lured in some kites, who would pluck the meat flung by the captain from the water's surface and put it into their mouths with their talons while in flight.

Okay, I just have to put one more croc picture. It's amazing how high they can propel themselves out of the water!

And then, 12,000+ kilometers (7,000+ miles) after starting in Melbourne more than a month ago, we reached the city of Darwin, the capitol of the state of the Northern Territory, and the only Australian capitol located in the tropics. Darwin is perched on the north coast of Australia, on the Timor Sea, which means we've now also seen all four of the bodies of water surrounding Australia (the Pacific in the east, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Indian Ocean in the west, and the Timor Sea along the northern coast).

I really liked Darwin; like Broome, it's hot and humid beyond all joking, but it's a very navigable city that seems to have everything one could need without feeling too big, and a great (free!) museum all about life in the Northern Territory, not to mention my favorite Darwin experience: the Thursday evening Mindil Beach Market, which had so many yummy Asian food and fruit smoothie stands that I walked around drooling for a half-hour, too paralyzed with amazement to choose anything. SR and I even shared a fresh coconut. First this woman hacked a hole in the top and gave us a straw so we could drink the water out, and then she split in in half so we could scoop out the meat and enjoy that, too. This is the life, man.

From here, SR and I are taking a little non-Australian detour. Our trip is 3.5 months long, but our tourist visas only allow us to stay in Australia for three months at a time before we have to leave the country for at least a night. Poor us! Till the next post, you can try guessing which nearby island we're flying to from Darwin for a two-week vacation from our vacation....