You never never know if you never never go…

The wet season in Australia’s top end begins round October with a build up when the heat and humidity becomes unbearable for most. This is then followed up from December with months of monsoon rains and thunderstorms. During this period you can get some fantastic lighting shows. It is however not for the faint hearted as the flights in the northern region tend to get pretty bumpy as the plane flies through thunderstorm and lightning flashes to the left and right of the plane all the time.

Once off the plane the humidity struck our faces and it didn’t take too many minutes before sweat started to appear in the face. Now I’ve been to tropical places before but this heat was just something else. During daytime Darwin actually seemed deserted as people were hiding indoors with the air conditioning turned up during the hottest hours. One has to wonder how they settled this place in the beginning without the without aircon, refrigeration, insect repellents or ice. All the things we now take for granted.

Neither does Darwin offer much in form of bathing at this time of the year as the deadly box jelly fish tends to show up at beaches and in rivers. Besides this many rivers and waterholes are infested with crocodiles, which make swimming in most places a bad affair any time of the year. (And yes, every year some unfortunate tourist decides to go for a night dip after a steaming hot day and end up in a crocs mouth.)

What makes the top end even a little bit more hostile during this time of the year are millions of insects. Especially the sand flies seem to be of a particularly nasty breed up here. Just like mosquitoes they tend to bite. The difference however is that they are found of flying into your eyes, mouth or creep up you nose. And their bites tend to itch off and on for a week. Sure you can try to protect yourself with repellent, but these buggers are really good at finding openings in your clothes or a small spot not covered by repellent. Although I didn’t wear it myself, it is actually quite common up here to wear a net on your hat which cover your whole head.

So what did Darwin offer that is good?
Well although the days were steaming hot, the nights were balmy and quite comfortable. Perfect for casual alfresco dining waterfront at one of the wharfs or by the boat harbour in Cullen bay. Most of the night life is gathered on Mitchell street, where also most hotels and hostels are located. 

Darwin Museum

The city also has an excellent museum just next to the botanical gardens. The exhibition covers areas such as local history, aboriginal culture, fauna. Admission is free, but if you enjoy the exhibition, do sign the guest book and/or give a small donation.

Darwin is also Australia’s most multicultural city with food from all around the world. This can particularly be enjoyed for a cheap price at the many outdoor markets.

These are however not the best reasons to visit Darwin. What makes this place so great is the nature and wild life.

In the suburbs and outskirts you often spot beautiful parrots, like the black cockatoo, and lizards like goannas and frill-necked lizards and wallabies. And with a short drive you reach some of the large national parks like Kakadu and Litchfield, teeming with wildlife. 

And you can get excellent help to plan your trips or find suitable tour operators from Darwin’s tourism office on Mitchell Street. The staff there provided us with help to plan our next trips and showed the areas where access was easy and what roads had been closed for the season.

First we decided to test the local fishing.
During dry season the Barramundi fishing in the rivers rules and dozens of operators arrange all kind of itineraries. Now during wet season the best fishing however seemed to be in the harbour it self.

Decent catch of Jew fish

Fishing
The waters in the harbour host a number of artificial reefs from sunken ships as well as deep bomb craters from world war 2 which today creates an excellent environment for fish. Our half-day fishing trip covered a couple of these artificial reefs and holes as well as some attempts at nearby mangroves. The result was a couple of big jewfish in the 8-9kilo range for myself and my wife (and my friend pulled up a 14 kilo one) as well as some decent size snappers, javelin fish and small sharks.

Crocodiles and termites
Next trip was to go to Adelaide river and to Litchfield National Park.
Both located within easy reach from Darwin. Adelaide River is best known for its crocodiles, especially the jumping ones.

Tour companies have been feeding crocs with meat hanging off a rope for nearly 20 years, so the crocs straight away recognise the boat and know when it is feeding time.

We choose to go with the Adelaide Queen Original Jumping Crocodile tour. It is a bit more expensive than the other tours but it is a bit longer. The boat also seemed better with two levels where you can watch from, a deck on top and panorama windows at the water level, ensuring you can see the feeding from every angle.

Besides feeding crocodiles the ‘original tour’ also feeds kites (hawks) and eagles in the area and if you are lucky like us, you will have a couple of white bellied eagles swoop down to grab slabs of meat hung at the same way as for the crocodile feeding.

Next we headed towards Litchfield.
On the way you however pass through a little town called Humpty Doo. Here we can recommend a genuine Aussie Pub lunch at the local hotel as well as a visit to the Barra shack. The Barra shack is a business specialised in making products out of fish leather. For instance shoes. And they don’t even smell fish.

Litchfield NP is best known for its termite mounds.
Particularly two different kind of termite mounds are prolific in the park, cathedral and magnetic termite mounds.

Cathedral Termite mound

The cathedral mound can get over 6 meters high. The more fascinating one is however the magnetic mound. It is called so because they are built flat with the broad side always pointing North-South, minimising the heat from the sun. The mounds are built by millions of blind termites and how they manage to pull off such a feet of engineering is unknown.

Some areas of the national park had already been closed because of the wet season but areas to rock pools and swimming holes with waterfalls are open around the year. (As usual make sure it is an area free of crocodiles before swimming.) Around the waterholes you also find wildlife in abundance. During our short visit we spotted colourful kookaburras, parrots and fruit bats. They also seemed used to humans and allowed us to walk right up next to them.