Darwin Australia

Darwin Australia

We have now left the Indian Ocean and are now in Darwin, in the Timor Sea which is a branch of the Indian Ocean.

At this point we are in Darwin, we are 850 miles from the equator. The daytime and nighttime temperatures stay nearly the same. Humidity is high, and always seems hotter to us because of the humidity.

Darwin is the capital city of Northern Territory Australia. It is the largest city in the sparsely populated Northern Territory. Population about 130,000 It is said to be Australia’s ONLY tropical capital city, but the smallest Australian capital city. Darwin only has two seasons: the ‘Wet’ season, monsoonal rains and high humidity (November to April) and the ‘Dry’ season: (May to October). The average temperature in Darwin year round is 88 degrees, with varying humidity. They say they never have to check the temperature, its always the same.

Darwin has the highest concentration of crocodiles in Australia. Any body of water in the ‘top end’ of Australia may contain large and potentially dangerous crocodiles. Saltwater crocodiles are more than likely to be found in ‘freshwater’. They say there are 200,000 salt water crocs in Australia

This is not real, but this is how big the crocodiles can grow to be.

More than 80,000 Saltwater Crocodiles now roam the waterways of Northern Australia, yet they are rarely ever seen. The crocodile is a cold blooded animal, they bask in the sun during the cooler months of June, July, and early August. but most of the time it's warm here, Crocodiles are buried in the mud, under the trees, in the shade, so you do not normally see Crocodiles. Crocodiles average 12 to 20 feet long and have 68 fearsome teeth than can replenish if broken off. They can live up to 70 years.

Darwin is the only Australian capital city to come under a substantial attach during WWII, on Feb 19th 1942 when the Japanese made 2 major air raids on Darwin from the aircraft carrier fleet that had attacked Pearl Harbor 3 months earlier, there were a total of 64 attacks over the next year, in Darwin, the last attack being November 12, 1943. Darwin became an important base for allied action against the Japanese in the Pacific.

The city of Darwin was named after Charles Darwin the famed naturalist, by a former shipmate. (However Charles Darwin supposedly was never in Darwin.)

Along the route to the ‘Jumping Crocodiles’ tour, which we did in Darwin, we saw millions of Mango trees, orchards and orchards of them.

The tour guide said there are 4 million mango trees in Darwin. The mango season starts in November. Towards the end of mango season, the migrant workers move on or go home, so then there is nobody to pick the fruit, the remaining fruit is free to whoever wants them, the rest fall from the trees and rot on the ground.

The croc tour was on the Adelaide river, where a lot of crocs live.

Adelaide River

Some of the crocodiles know their boat, so the crocs leave their place of hiding, knowing they might be fed. The crew dangled meat from a long pole to get the crocs to jump out of the water.

They make 4 attempts to get the croc to jump out of the water, each time they get a little further out of the water, then they let them have the meat.  Some of the crocs show signs that they’ve encountered other crocodiles. Scars on some, one has a name of ’Stumpy’,  because one of his arms was bitten off by another croc.

A few of the crocs have names, because the ones  seen regularly  get a chance at that one time a day 

meal. They are the lazy ones…they don’t have to hunt for their survival.  The tour operators also throw some tiny chunks of food into the air for the birds that come close to the boat to retrieve the food in mid air.

These raptors are called 'Whistling Kites'. 

They like a free meal as well.

 A view of the valley, where we saw a lot of flocks of white birds in flight, hard to see in this picture, but a lovely sight. 

We also saw a few of the feral water buffalo. About 80 of these water buffalos were originally brought in to the northern Australian settlements from Asia in the 1800's. Once the settlements were abandoned the water buffalo remained, multiplied and now number about 150,000. These feral water buffalo live in swamps and floodplains across the wet parts of northern Australia, where they have ready access to food and water. We did see a few, but far away, I've cropped this picture so you can have a look.
They have a hunting season on them.
 Speaking again of the ’wet’ season, we can attest to that! After we returned to the ship terminal after our croc tour, the clouds in the distance were very dark, and our bus driver, a local…. Said “it’ll rain soon“. Sure enough! He knew what he was talking about. Did it ever rain! It Poured!

Trapped inside the ship terminal, can you see our cruise ship in the distance, that's where we had to run to.

At least we did get dropped off at the Darwin Ship terminal just before it started falling. We got trapped in the ship terminal with a thousand others waiting for it to stop. It was literally coming down in sheets, and very very hard. So much rain! Even though Royal Caribbean had canopies set up, the strong winds blowing the rain horizontally, and lots of lightening, forced them to stop passengers from going to the gangway back on to the ship. We eventually got to go in small groups, but had to run in the rain through several inches of standing rain water to get on the ship. They offered beach towels as we came were finally allowed on board. Some passengers were more than drenched, especially those who chose to get dropped off in town to shop instead of being dropped off at the ship port. There wasn’t a dry spot on some of them.

                        Done with Darwin, now we'll be at sea for 2 full days going to Yorkey's Knob, where we will dock, and we'll need to be 'tendered' in to visit Cairnes and Port Douglas.