Darwin and surrounds Part 2

Corroborree Billabong - View from Boat Ramp

Took a cruise on Corroborree Billabong, which is about a 75 minute drive from Palmerston along the Arnhem Highway, the highway that leads you into Kakadu National Park. It's a favourite fishing spot for Barramundi. I always thought a Billabong was a relatively small pond left after a river receded. Well, the “pond”  in this case comprises over 20 km of navigable waterway with an area  measured in the 1000‘s of acres. This Billabong is a permanent “hole” in the Mary river, and unlike most other rivers up that way, it doesn’t have a coastal river mouth. 

Female Jabiru - Corroborree Billabong

As a consequence, the water is fresh water. The Billabong is home to an amazing array of aquatic life, including birds, snakes and of course, crocodiles, both fresh water and salties. The Billabong is the home to the Jabiru, a member of the stork family. These birds come in at probably 30” (750mm) tall for a fully grown male or female, and you can tell the difference between male and female most definitely through eye colour, with the female having yellow eyes and the male black. The female also has pronounced deep aqua coloured neck feathers that glisten in the sun and give the appearance of being like velvet. 

Sea Eagle - Corroborree Billabong

There are also Ibis, Pelicans, Brolgas, Sea Eagles, Magpie Geese and the Whistling Duck which has a habit of rounding up other bird species, keeping them together and making sure they’re safe from harm - a sort of Kelpie of the Billabong if you will. The Billabong is also home to wild pigs. These pigs cause havoc with the environment, and according to our guide, in order to eradicate them entirely, you would have to kill off 70% of the entire adult pig population each year in order to achieve that, such is the rate at which they breed. There is a culling process that takes place, but it can only maintain a kind of status quo.

The main star of the Billabong is undoubtedly the crocodile. There are both freshwater and “saltwater” or saltie crocodiles there and Corroborree Billabong is thought to have the largest concentration of Salt water crocodiles anywhere. As a result, the saltie or Estuarine Crocodile, is the dominant predator , eating anything that moves, including freshwater crocodiles. They take anything from pigs, bull Buffalo - that’s bull Buffalo - to fish, birds and given the opportunity, the odd tourist stupid enough to hang an arm over the side of the boat or wade too deep into the water around the boat ramp. They’ve even basked in the sun on the boat ramp with all the fisher-persons looking forlornly on - who’s gonna go tap this guy on the “shoulder” and ask him to move along. Not bloody likely ....

A 3.5 Metre Saltie - Corroborree Billabong

Some interesting facts about crocodiles; crocodiles have only been the subject of detailed study within the last couple of decades; studies have revealed, through blood tests, that crocodiles are immune to disease and do not contain cancer producing cells - ie they don’t get cancer. It’s also a myth that crocodiles eat rotting flesh - they don’t because if they did, toxins would develop in their gut and it would kill them. So they only eat fresh. At this stage in the studies, no-one really knows how long crocodiles live for - the way they tell is by counting the number of rings in the bone of one of their legs, just as they do when aging a tree -  and the largest crocodile caught to date came from the Corroborree Billabong - he measured 6.23 metres, or a tad over 20ft long. I say “he” because female crocodiles rarely exceed 3.5 metres or so. Another gem of information from our guide came by way of Steve Irvin, the now deceased and legendary wild life guy from Queensland. Apparently, if you’re going to be taken by a crocodile, you’re better to be taken while in the water than be taken on land (not taken at all sounds better to me !). Reason is that the muscle that controls the gripping power can’t function well while the animal is in the water trying to hold it’s prey; ie you. Apparently, a well placed punch to the muscle controlling that gripping function will disable it, thus allowing you to swim - in total confidence - back to shore. Nobody on our cruise volunteered to test that theory - it was  emphasis on the word "apparently" that did it ....

3.5 to 4 Metre Saltie - Corroborree Billabong

The term Saltwater crocodile infers that they only live in saltwater - not true. Salties have salt glands in their snout that allows them to live in salt water, but they also live in fresh water. So salt water crocodiles may spend their entire life in saltwater, or freshwater or a bit of both. And finally, salties spend their day regulating their temperature within the confines of 33C to 35C or so on hot days  - they do this by taking shade under mangroves with their mouth open. And this is where we saw the croc you see in the photo to the left. He was guesstimated at 3.5 to 4 metres long (ie a big bugger) just lying under a mangrove, minding his own business - and he didn’t flinch one bit, even when the Guide ran the boat up onto the shoreline right in front of him. He would have been maybe 2.5 metres away from the front of the boat and self and a couple of others were right there at the pointy end. Someone asked why he didn’t move. Answer: he knows he’s the top “dog”  - he moves for no-one, not even a boat full of gawking, photo-snapping, well fed tourists. “In fact..”, our Guide continued “... he knows he can jump right in this boat anytime he wants ...”.  As I continued to squint through my camera eyepiece, banging away taking a blaze of photos, the sound of stampeding feet left me, as the solitary idiot, standing there with a virtual sign around my neck saying “LUNCH”. 

It’s one of those “WTF ?” moments everyone has on the odd occasion.

B-52 With City of Darwin Markings

The Aviation museum in Darwin is excellent - yes I’m about to go on about yet another museum and golly gosh, an Aviation museum at that. This one is unusual, however, in that it houses one of only two B-52’s from the USA that have been loaned to foreign museums; ie non - USA museums. The only other museum I can recall having a B-52 is the Duxford museum - to me, the mother of all aviation museums. 

B-52 Cockpit 

Anyway, this thing has a 56 metre wingspan and consumes the entire hangar width, the huge drooping wings acting as if the wings of a brooding hen hovering over her chicks - the chicks in this case being other exhibits. It’s impossible to get a photo which shows the size of it, unless you use a wide angle lens, and then you get too much distortion, which takes away from physical impact this aircraft actually has. The video giving all the stats on the aircraft also has some interviews with pilots. Apparently the B-52 was not an easy aeroplane to fly and it was not comfortable. 

Aside from the B-52, the museum houses an excellent array of aircraft, with the standouts  including a Sabre CA-27, Mirrage IIIO, the front section of a B-25 Mitchell, a Wessex and a Hughy Cobra gunship. There are various items of equipment and other memorabilia and an excellent array of books on aircraft etc. If you an aviation nut, it’s well worth the time.

Sunset FBYC - A bit disappointing on the day

And as a finale to our stay, we headed for the Fannie Bay Yacht Club, which faces due west and has a magnificent beach frontage with yachts anchored offshore. We watched the sunset, which was rather disappointing given the clouds about at the time, but I was pleasantly surprised to bump into two guys from my past life as a Consulting Engineer at Moorabbin airport. Dave Hooten and Tony Smith are both contract pilots that operated out of Moorabbin at the time and Dave did some flight testing for me for some mods we’d designed at the time - I’m talking 1990 to1993. Dave, Tony and a lady flight attendant had flown a Cessna Citation up from Essendon for some contract work in the Phillipines, and they are due to fly back to Melbourne in the early hours of this coming Friday. A very pleasant evening was had by all.

Tomorrow May 16, we head out of Darwin, heading for the East Alligator River in Kakadu National Park. The plan is to take a cruise on the East Alligator River, something I did in 2011, and something I'm looking forward to again.