Crocodile Darwin

Leading up to my time in Darwin, everyone made it sound like there was nothing to do in the actual city other than signing up for tours in the surrounding National Parks. Having already been to Kakadu and Litchfield with Adventure Tours, I thought this may result in a bit of a struggle. Though it was rather small, I loved Darwin! I can see how it could be boring after awhile, but I wish I had stayed longer than a week. Everything you needed in Darwin could be found on Mitchell Street, but there were about 5 square blocks worth wandering through.

Side note: I would advise all backpackers to stay at Youth Shack because it’s right in the center of everything, and from what I hear, everyone preferred it over the other hostels on that strip. The YHA is apparently horrible, which comes as a surprise to me because it’s usually a safe bet (albeit more expensive). I stayed at the Cavenagh (aka The Cav) and quite liked it! There was a nice pool in the center, which was always very social, and a bar and bistro that stayed open until 10pm every night. Perfect if you’re traveling alone!

Most of my time in Darwin was spent wandering around and relaxing, but I have 3 events in particular that I find worthy of sharing…

Deckchair Cinema

“Where stars light the screen.” This outdoors cinema was unlike any other because of its dinner buffet, decently stocked bar of beer and wines, movie munchies, and of course the lawn chairs! I was accompanied by my Italian friend, Marco, whom I met on the Groovy Grapes tour up to Alice Springs. The flick of the night was Once Upon a Time in the West, a classic Western movie which I’ve actually never seen before. And Marco hadn’t seen it since his childhood, so he was happy to revisit the cinematography and soundtrack. The stairway leading down to the cinema was blocked off for some unknown reason, so it took us about half an hour to actually find our way to the Deckchair Cinema. We arrived just as the movie was starting, so I didn’t get a chance to snap a picture, but I found it enchanting enough that a Google search seemed necessary for sharing.

I would have really preferred to have seen Griff the Invisible or Red Hill, both of which are Australian films starring Ryan Kwanten, the hottie from True Blood! But the old Western added a little extra to the whole idea of the classic outdoors cinema.

Mindil Beach Sunset Markets

These markets take place year round on Sundays and Thursdays. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to go to one of them! I caught a bus just down the street from the Cav for $2, which dropped me off 3km later right in front of the markets. Immediately you see the hoards of people flooding in for this special attraction.

Mindil Beach Sunset Markets

Live music was around every corner, my favorite of course being Em Dee, “high-tech didgeridoo meets drum n’ bass.” Not only did it look difficult with how much he was taking on at a single time, but the music was actually pretty good! I almost wish I had stuck around to purchase one of his CDs. Dance partayyy!

Em Dee

The booths consisted of pretty much everything you would expect: t-shirts, mugs and coozies, crocodile and kangaroo skins, jewelry made of coconuts and shells, south sea pearls, opals, didgeridoos, boomerangs, southeast Asian dresses and fisherman pants, etc. I found a cute little hand-made bracelet for myself!

pressed flowers sealed over mother of pearl

Of course an entire lane was also dedicated to an eclectic mix of grab-and-go foods as well. I tried some goat and wallaby-on-a-stick but settled with a delicious crocodile burger. It’s surprisingly better when it’s not fried – in which case, yes of course it tastes like fried chicken!

I was so mesmerized by all the booths’ offerings that I hardly noticed the sun setting until everyone flooded the beach.

Mindil Beach Sunset Markets

Mindil Beach sunset

The sign leading to the beach was rather heartwarming: WARNING! No swimming due to crocodiles, sharks and box jellyfish… Noted! Thank you! (I will not be swimming this evening.)

sipping on some fresh coconut milk

When the sun finally went down, many of the people went home. However the markets stayed open until 10pm. And the night performers took over!

juggling fire from a pole held up by 4 volunteers

Overall, it was a fabulous night of shopping, food, beach and entertainment all jumbled into one!

Crocosaurus Cove

Alas, my final adventure takes place right in the heart of Darwin! Croc Cove is home to the biggest tourest trap of all: The Cage of Death. Essentially what they do is place you inside a glass cage that is lowered right into the tank with a massive saltwater crocodile. Initially these salties would go mental at the sight of a person in their cage and would swim right up to them, banging, trying to find a way in to eat them… supposedly. Now they have gotten so used to all these tourists that they hardly even pay attention to them. I actually witnessed this poor guy get lowered into a tank all fired up with his underwater camera, and the crocodile was just chilling on the bank of the water. The guy submerged a couple times to try and take a picture, but I don’t think he could even get one. Lame! But good in theory. I probably would have done it myself if some Darwinians hadn’t warned me about it first.

The Cage of Death

That being said, one girl was lucky enough for her “near death experience” to take place during the croc feeding, which takes place twice a day. I’m not sure how much different it would have been from her side of the glass, but I guess it was pretty cool to watch!

croc feeding over The Cage of Death

You hear a lot about the jumping crocs in Darwin. In order to catch prey such as bats or birds that fly and perch in trees, the crocs will actually swim upward with such great force that their tail can propel them out of the water. Whereas larger crocs can get about half of their body out of the water (still a few meters!), the little crocs can clear the water by several feet! I was unable to catch the peak of its jump on camera, but I was able to witness one croc make a bold attempt to jump for his flesh-on-a-stick.

jumping croc

Perhaps my favorite part of the day was getting to play with all the baby crocs. And by play, I mean fish for them. Following both of the croc feedings, guests are given the opportunity to enter a platform above the baby crocs where they can feed them from a fishing pole.

fishing for crocs

The strategy is to splash the meat in the water where there are no crocs. This gets their attention so that they will swim for it. Once their eye is on the prize, you hold the meat up above the water so that the little guys will jump for it. So cute!

croc fishing... tap, tap!

champion fisherman, right there!

After the fishing/feeding session, I wandered into the World of Crocs exhibit, where I was allowed to hold a baby croc!

baby croc

I felt a little guilty holding it because the poor thing had been kept in a teeny tiny little locker for his “shift” this afternoon. It kept peeing on the caretaker, who did not seem enthused about working there. When I asked “does this hurt him?” he shrugged it off with a “BAH’DUNNO!” I’m gonna guess it couldn’t have been comfortable for him, considering how much he weighed and that I was holding him by the neck. The underside of their body is quite soft and vulnerable in comparison to their backside. Poor thing! But I did get to hold a baby croc…

Darwin was a blast! Wish I could have stayed longer, but now I’m off to Cairns 🙂

Staircase to the Moon

During 2 or 3 nights each month from March through October, a spectacular phenomenon occurs in Broome. When the tide is extremely low, the rippled mudflats are exposed beyond the sandy beaches of Roebuck Bay. On these special nights for only 5-10 minutes, the full moon actually rises over the horizon, reflecting off the exposed ripples of sand and creating an image best described as “The Staircase to the Moon.”

Apparently last month was cloudy on the nights it was expected to appear, so no one was able to witness the phenomenon. Luckily I timed my trip to Broome perfectly so that I would have 2 chances to see it before flying back to the east coast.

Last night, the Kimberly Klub shuttled a big group of us over to Town Beach, where hundreds of people stood waiting for the main event. Behind the lookout was a field crowded with spectators and night markets. Though I didn’t get a chance to meander my way through all the booths, I was quite happy to grab a $3 hot dog for dinner.

My friends and I gathered along the edge of a plateau above the beach, facing where we expected the moon to rise. Slowly the sky became a little brighter over one patch of the horizon, and everyone else crowded together in anticipation.

crowds gathering

Watching the moon rise is an unusual experience. Everyone has seen the sun rise and the sun set, but I would never have thought that it was possible to actually witness the reverse happen with the moon. Unlike the sunrise or sunset, which draws out all the colors of the rainbow across the sky, the moon simply glowed a warm orange-ish tint. And just as everyone said it would, the moon actually reflected off the banks. It looked as if you could actually run along the beach and climb right up to it. Truly amazing!

Everyone’s flashes were going off as they desperately tried to capture an image of the phenomenon. Myself included. No matter which setting I put on my camera, nothing turned out well. The coolest shot I took resulted in what looked like the moon exploding.

and then the moon exploded

Tonight I was better prepared. My errand for the day was to buy a cheap tri-pod for my camera. I found one of those beady looking tripods that bends and wraps around free-standing objects so that it doesn’t require a flat ground or table, which is rarely available when you would actually need it.

This time around, my friend Arnika drove 3 of us to the Golf Club just a bit further down the road from where all the markets are. The clubhouse itself was closed, but there were 2 or 3 other carloads of people who had the same idea as us. I claimed a street sign for my tripod, which ended up being right in the middle of one of those groups of people. I set my camera to the “starry night” setting with a 60 second shutter speed. And…. Voila!

Staircase to the Moon

I’m sure if you Googled “Staircase to the Moon,” you would find much more clear and professional looking pictures. But I was rather proud of capturing what I could of this night. (Even though there was a blasted boat in the way.) I even lent my tripod to another onlooker, who had a similar camera as mine, so that he could share his photo with all his friends.

What a night! This definitely ranks as one of my favorite memories in Western Australia.

Camel Safari

Ahh, finally Britt and I have reached our destination in Western Australia: Broome! Britt is only staying for a few days before she heads back to Sydney so we decided to kick-start our journey in Broome with the utmost important endeavor: camel-riding.

I’ve always imagined camels to be indigenous to the Middle East, so they seem very out of place to me when found anywhere else (for instance my junior year prom in Nashville, TN). When you think of wild animals in Australia, you think dingos, kangaroos, crocodiles, koalas and emus. Anything but camels. Oddly enough, Australia actually has the largest population of feral camels in the world with a population increase of around 10% each year. Thousands of these one-humped camels were originally brought to Australia from India, Pakistan, and a handful of other countries between 1840 and 1907. They were primarily used as pack animals for exploration and the construction of railroads and telegraph lines; but they also served well for sending supplies to remote mines and settlements. Camels are perfectly suited for these tasks because, unlike horses, they are able to carry heavy loads over long distances and may go for days without drinking water. These are pretty powerful advantages in a country where temperatures can reach 50*C / 120*F in the summertime.

Even though they weren’t indigenous to Australia, camels have since thrived in the environment and are now considered pests by the locals. For starters, they have no natural predators so there is nothing to keep their population in check. They are known to destabilize dune crests, causing massive erosion, and they feed on over 80% of the available plant species so that other animals, such as the indigenous marsupials, must compete with them for food. Most of their infamy that I hear about results in their fouling of waterholes, which are already scarce in the Outback.

Regardless, dozens of camels are available for our tourist enjoyment in Broome. The funny thing is that unlike dolphins that experience shorter life spans in captivity, camels live much longer. They are extremely clumsy animals and would not be able to survive in the wild with any sort of injury, but in captivity, their caretakers are able to help them recover without exposing them to the harsh elements.

So here we are… in Broome… on the beach… with our camels… at sunset.

Our camel’s name was Matilda, and she was especially cute because she had this big droopy lip that gave her some extra personality.

darling Matilda

After the first 5 or 10 minutes passed, Britt and I began to wonder what in the world we were going to do in the next hour that could possibly keep us entertained. But as the sun began to descend, that time quickly flew by.

Cable Beach is known as one of the best beaches in the world… and for good reason! In the daytime, it looks like a National Geographic picture with green grass against red rock on white sand with a blue sky and turquoise waters. The beach is so long and the population so little (15,000 normally, but then 50,000 in the dry season) that there is more than enough room for everyone to spread out for their own private patch.

Then at night, well, you can’t beat that sunset!

sharing the sunset with Britt & Matilda

Snorkeling in Turquoise Bay

The original plan for today was to SCUBA dive off the Exmouth Navy Pier, which is ranked in the world’s top 10 best dive sites (according to scubatravel.co.uk)! Unfortunately no one is diving there for the next couple of days, so instead we signed up for the dive at the Muiron Islands, which has wall diving, swim throughs and caves. But when we got back to our hostel last night, there was a note on our door from the dive center. We went to the shop to see what was going on and they told us that the dive had been changed to a whale shark snorkeling trip, but that we could dive at the snorkel sites. So we obliged and met up with them this morning. The crew was grumpy at first then threw on some fake smiles when we got to the boat. The trial snorkeling site was pretty weak, and it ended up raining while we were there. Trip cancelled! We all went home and got a refund. I was so relieved we weren’t going to be held hostage with that crew! Britt and I sought shelter in the pub for some lunch, and within a couple hours there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky… amazing!

We were both pretty tuckered out, but decided to go snorkeling at Turquoise Bay off of Cape Range National Park, which is about a 15 minute drive farther than the boat ramps used for the whale shark tours. We felt obligated to see the reef there because so many people had told us about how great it is, but loads of people also told us about their near drowning experiences due to the high currents that have been known to sweep people out into the sea. Even our map had a warning sign saying, “dangerous currents may occur.” We stepped into the water a little ways down the beach so that if we ended up getting caught in the current, we would still have a fighting chance to swim back to the beach before the peninsula ended. Of course as soon as we got in the water, we couldn’t figure out what everyone was talking about. It was perfect!

Turquoise Bay gets my approval

The reef was only 15-20m off the beach. And the entire time I was snorkeling there, I don’t think I went any deeper than 5m. I’ve never been a huge fan of snorkeling because I find it awkward and limiting, but this place totally changed my mind. Similar to the snorkeling sites we went to off the boat yesterday, this reef was full of colorful marine life that was easily visible from the surface!

unicorn fish

picasso triggerfish

cornetfish / smooth flutemouth / whiptail

blue-spotted stingray

In addition to all the fun little creatures, there were some more exciting larger ones swimming around as well…

white-tip reef shark

black-tip reef shark

stingray with about a 2m wingspan

I would have like to have stayed a bit longer in Exmouth so I could dive the Navy Pier and Muiron Islands, but we’re leaving tomorrow 😦

For next time!!!

Good ‘Ole Shark Bay

We didn’t have anything in particular planned for today, so we decided to explore all the stops along the World Heritage Drive on the North West Coastal Highway, essentially backtracking as far as the Overlander Roadhouse (130km). The destinations were quite diverse, I must say.

Eagle Bluff

Visitors overlook the clear and shallow waters of Shark Bay Marine Park from high on a boardwalk. You’re supposed to see everything from sharks, rays, turtles, and even dugongs (sea cows) – all of course depending on the season and what not. All we really saw were a few dark patches, over which we debated on making a big scene in order to stir up commotion for the other onlookers. Maybe next time.

Eagle Bluff

Shell Beach

This one was pretty cool! As the name implies, the beach is made up entirely of shells rather than sand. They all come from a creature called the Hamelic Cockle, which is heavily populated in the area due to its especially salty water. The shells have all washed up into massive piles, creating a beach 10m thick of shells, up to 1km wide and many km long!

Shell Beach

Shell Beach

Because they essentially have a never-ending supply of these shells, they have a mine rigged up on the far end of the beach for exporting shells. I figured they were used mainly for architectural purposes, but it turns out they’re also crumbled up and put into chicken feed so that their egg shells become harder. Who’da thunk it?

Hamelin Pool Stromatolites

Stromatolites are colonies of micro-organisms that resemble the oldest forms of life here on Earth. They were present about 3.5 billion years ago, and these stromatolites in Hamelin Pool are thought to be more like 3,000 years old… “the largest and oldest living fossils.” Stromatolites are extremely rare nowadays, but the high salinity in the area makes it a comfortable area for the colonies to grow here. We felt it was necessary to see because everyone made it sound like life started here, but it was a little anti-climactic once we saw them. I wasn’t expecting to shake hands with God or anything, but maybe I was imagining something more dramatic like the Pinnacles; instead they were just rocky lumps in shallow water. But I guess they’re the most basic form of life, so it’s not like they were gonna be completely crazy looking to begin with.  You gotta respect the process.

Stromatolites

A Backpacker’s Night to Remember

At this point, we returned to our home base at the YHA hostel. That pool was the greatest gift anyone could ask for! It was also full of a bunch of other people who had just arrived on an Aussie Wanderer bus (or one of those tours). We befriended a handful of them and then watched the sun set over the ocean. Then conversation turned to going-out plans. Apparently their bus driver was friends with Jamie Morgan, the pearl farmer from the popular Aussie reality TV series “Farmer Wants a Wife.” And Jamie was celebrating something… I thought it was a birthday but I think it was some sort of reunion show. Anyway, the plan for the night was to go to THE bar for a “disco” which then turned into a karaoke night. The Swedish girls sang multiple ABBA songs. I might have sung some Garth Brooks. And we all met Jamie!

Love the Rotto

Rottnest Island earned its name in 1696 when Willem de Vlamingh mistook some local animals as giant rats. Rotte Nest is Dutch for Rat’s Nest. Sound appealing yet? Well it turns out the “rats” he saw happen to be the most adorable and friendly marsupials we’ve come across in Australia: Quokkas!

Quokka

ADORABLE Quokka!

As soon as we departed the Rottnest Express ferry, we jumped in line for a hired bike. Although we debated about whether or not to ride tandem, we decided we’d prefer to continue liking each other at the end of the day, so we each got out own one-gear bike. Minus the lack of gears, it turned out to be a great decision. The island is roughly 20km in circumference, and we ended up biking about 10-15 of those kilometers. In the hot sun. With loads of hills. Yes, we are great athletes.

Biking Rottnest Island

We saw our first quokka on the side of a trail and immediately tossed aside our bikes in order to get a closer look. It shied away when I tried to pet it, but I did manage to have it feed directly from my hand! And for all you conservationists out there: no, I did not feed it human food. In fact, I couldn’t figure out what it was eating, so I gathered up a lovely handful of what I later discover was quokka poop before I realized the nuts looked different.

feeding the quokka

I’d like to say that we’re best friends, but it was totally using me for my nuts. Cheap quokka. Apparently they’ve also learned how to knock over beers at the restaurant so they can drink it themselves. Sounds like the Memphis goats!

As we drove along the island, we stopped at a couple lookout spots, but only pulled off for 2 snorkeling beaches. Our main snorkeling point was Little Salmon Bay on the south tip of the island. I experimented with my new underwater camera.. unfortunately there wasn’t anything too exciting down there.

snorkeling in Little Salmon Bay

fishies

brain coral

Once we exhausted that snorkeling site, we decided to peddle back closer toward the ferry dock, so we turned around to stop at a wreck site off the coast. Then the typical Lucile move happened… I broke my new camera. Or at least the battery flooded. We’ll see what the manufacturer says once I turn it in for repair 😦

We ended up turning in our bikes and retiring to the Rottnest Hotel for a burger and beer. Britt found her Redback and I found my White Rabbit, so we were content. Next thing you know, a peacock is standing next to me at our table. No reason. Just a random peacock! Apparently everyone else thought it was normal except for us and one other table of girls about our age. Our immediate camera response mayyyy have frightened it off.

peacock??!

Quokkas were also running between the legs of restaurant patrons, grabbing fallen crumbles just as pigeons or squirrels would at home. It was quite an interesting picture. Minus the camera troubles and a few other idiotic moments, it was a fantastic day. Perfect weather. Great exercise. Beautiful views!