11,000 km later – the 2 ½ Bradshaws reach the Top End

What a journey it’s been, all the way up the Stuart Highway from Adelaide to Darwin, with a detour to Uluru.

We arrived in Darwin on Tuesday and are staying at a Barramundi fishing and conservation park on the outskirts.  It has everything to keep the 2 ½ Bradshaws happy.  Winston can run around off leash with the owners’ two corgis and have a cooling dip in the lake.  There’s a tinnie for campers’ use which Jonathan takes out to try and catch a Barra for supper.  It’s lovely and peaceful and I can sit reading, watching the birdlife and taking photographs.

At the Darwin Italian Festival – missing my little Fiat.

Darwin’s year round temperature is consistently around 32 degrees C and the seasons in the Top End are referred to as Wet and Dry.  May to October is the peak visitor time during the dry season when the night time temperature can drop to a cool 20 degrees.  We’re also now in croc country. The crocodylus porosus or saltwater crocodile is known as a ‘saltie’ in the Top End and it’s definitely at the top of the food chain.  The highest concentration in Australia is around Darwin and the river systems to the south.  After being hunted nearly to extinction, they are now a protected species in Australia and there is estimated to be 200,000 of them in the wild.

We saw possibly the most famous saltie of all – a 5 metre male called Sweetheart who is stuffed and on display at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory.

Whilst I can’t say I’m a fan of salties, I did feel sorry for old ‘Sweetheart’.   He terrorised boaties in the 1970s, and in 1979, it was decided to catch him and keep him in captivity.   They gave him a sedative but thought it hadn’t worked as he was still active.  What they didn’t realise was, it had shut down the system which prevents crocs from drowning.  Sweetheart became tangled underwater and slowly drowned.

The taxidermist given the task of stuffing Sweetheart actually took home some of the meat for dinner.  Here’s a link to this very interesting story:  http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-04/the-darwin-sweetheart-crocodile-taxidermy-story/7587666

Sweetheart then went on a tour of Australia to promote the Northern Territory, though I’m not sure how telling people you’ve got dangerous saltwater crocodiles persuades them to visit!

The other particularly interesting exhibit at the museum tells the story of Cyclone Tracy which devastated Darwin on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day 1974.  The cyclone reached wind speeds of over 200 km/hr and destroyed over 70% of buildings in the city.  Seventy-one people lost their lives.  They have a dark, sound proof booth where you can hear a recording of the cyclone at its height.

Jonathan flew to Australia with his mum in January 1975 and can remember their plane being diverted to Darwin to pick up evacuees.

 

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