22- 08-11 Cahill's Crossing

 

Left at our usual time and had a smooth run on bitumen to Jabiru.  This is a small town with – would you believe it?  A bakery.  Those of us who wanted to purchased licences to go into Injlalake art gallery on the way back from Cobourg Peninsula.  These were $13.60 per person to travel the 8 km  to get to it.  This must be the highest road toll in the world.  We then had to travel back to Bawlai to get permits to travel into/through  Kakadu another $25 per person.  We have to  carry these permits at all times we are in Kakadu (they last 14 days).

Greg, Wanda, Michael and I had been dawdling along and were the last to leave.  We turn right on the highway and come to….the Ranger MIne.  There is nowhere else to go so  we drive into the mine.  No one stops us and the only restrictions we can see is that we have to stay on the bitumen.  We decide that thisa can’t be right and call Greg on the CB – he is coming our way!  We are bewildered, there is a small dirt track and we turn down it, fortunately we meet a workers vehicle who points us back in the right direction.  We should have turned LEFT.  Hehe.

We backtrack and finally arrive at the camp, it’s only 2ish so still plenty of day left.  Good camp, quite busy. It has toilets and solar hot water showers.

We head off down to check out Cahill’s Crossing, this is the East Alligator River where we will cross into Arnhem land tomorrow.  Wanda, Greg, Michael and I go to the boat ramp a little further up from the crossing.  Hmmm – huge salty (salt water crocodile) swims lazily by.  A very big beastie.  Take photos but they don’t really show it.  Our eyes are amazing aren’t they?  We walk to the crossing and there are people fishing on it, the water is probably only 30 cms deep.  There are 2 large salties in this section, one sunning itself, the other gliding silently down the river, on the other side of the crossing (where we have just come from)  we now see 2.  4 Crocs in the space of about 50 metres.

The rangers come around to collect the money and after only a few minutes, they have identified Tony as ‘the cheeky one’  LOL (laugh out loud)

The crossing will be really easy tomorrow, apparently it is a neep tide.  It will be more dangerous on our way back and we will have to wait until the tide recedes.

 

There is a croc in the picture on the right but very hard to see