Honeymoon #3 (Australia) - Crocodiles

While we were in nice, cool, Sydney, we discussed our plans of driving north to Darwin with our hosts, Peter and Elizabeth.  While we were having to wear jackets in Sydney, we were checking the weather in Darwin, and it was already getting to be in the 90’s (Fahrenheit) (around 32-ish Celsius).  I remember saying something like, “well, at least we can go for a swim.”  “But you can’t!” exclaimed Elizabeth.  I was confused – why not?  “Because there are crocodiles, there!”

And then, when we got close to Darwin, our Darwin friends, Dennis and Anne, told us about this lovely place, Edith Falls, where one could swim – they remove any crocodiles, periodically, so that people CAN swim. 

Here’s a shot of some of the falls in the park, on the trail that we went on to get to the pool just above these falls, to swim:

And here’s a shot of the pool that we swam in, with another waterfall behind me and the Cure JM (Juvenile Myositis) banner:

Dennis encouraged us to take a tour to see the crocodiles, even if it’s a bit artificial, as the crocodiles are in the wild, and they are rather spectacular.  Click here to see a 16 second video of a crocodile in action on our little tour on the Adelaide River.  Here are a couple of still shots.  First, the approaching crocodile; note the shape of the head:

Next, the jump – these guys are amazing – their tails are almost the same length as their bodies, and they use them to launch their bodies out of the water:

I love that you can see his back legs just at the water level, his left “arm”  with those long sharp claws down by his side as he also uses that to create momentum upward, and, those nice sharp teeth.  This next shot shows what it looks like with his back toward you:

And then this one, with the arm thrust down, and the full set of teeth:

And here’s a close-up of the teeth:

This next guy is much older, and bigger:

and he doesn’t have much in the way of teeth left:

(and he’s also missing his right front leg, and is known as “Brutus”).  Note how “gummy” his mouth is. . .

Here’s another beauty on the river shore:

And a close-up of a baby crocodile:

Oh, and while looking at this little guy, there were these other creatures running around in the mud:

They’re called mudskippers.  There are three of them in the above picture.  The above is a close-up – for size comparison, note the nearby leaf.

So, back to the crocodiles, they are wild, and while they don’t *depend* on these tasty morsels provided by the tour operators, they certainly are encouraged to show themselves and participate in the revelry. 

We saw one crocodile, completely in the wild, at this billabong (a pond):

 

for which there was the following warning:

Since we’d seen so many of these signs (pretty much, everywhere where there was water), we may have had a little bit of a casual response to the sign.  We had gone there to check out the gorgeous birds.  We weren’t at the water’s edge, but we were getting somewhat close to it, when all of a sudden, we all spotted a very large crocodile coming our way.  We all decided that we weren’t interested in being lunch for the croc, so moved away, without, I’m sad to say, a picture. . . 

So, with these crocodile images firmly in our heads, what better thing to do than to go some place for a swim?  It was, after all, very, very hot, with temperatures at least 95F (35C), and definitely reaching over 100F (38C), frequently.  We decided to do a hike to Jim Jim Falls, which required us to go on a road for 4 wheel drive cars, only.  Some roads specified whether the 4WD had to be high clearance or not.  This one required high clearance during some times of the year.  We thought that we would try it, and were successful in getting to the trailhead for Jim Jim Falls.  At the trailhead, we noticed the following two signs:

talking about how they manage the crocodiles so that we’ll be safe swimming in the pool at Jim Jim Falls, and:

that introduced the concept of two different types of crocodiles, which we only fully understood, later in our trip.

One of the first things we noticed on our hike was a crocodile trap:

This picture of the trap was on our way out – and it was sprung!  We wondered if a crocodile had, indeed, been caught in it, but we couldn’t tell.

Looking ahead to Jim Jim Falls:

Here’s a shot of where the falls would be if there were falls, from the pool of water in which we were swimming:

And then, another shot from that same pool, looking back to where we’d hiked n from:

We did a lot of climbing over rocks to get into this pool.  There is a pool with a nice sandy beach on the other side of the rocks just at the end of this pool.   And soon after we arrived, so did several families, some Australian, and one American family doing some travelling similar to ours.  We got some tips for other “must see” places, and headed back.

Dennis and Anne had told us to tour Katherine Gorge, so that was our next day’s stop.  There are several gorges, here, and we didn’t have enough time to go through all 3 gorges, but we were able to do the ½ day kayak through the 1^st gorge:

That’s my back.  You might note that I’m wearing a long-sleeved cotton shirt – it was the only way I could be comfortable in the searing sun and heat: I’d soak my shirt and pants, and rewet them when they dried.  The kayak was for a couple of miles, and then we left the kayaks on the shore of the end of the 1^st gorge, and then went on a short little hike to the 2^nd gorge for a swim:

Rebecca and Ed were happily cooling off.

Jay swung around after the above picture, and took a picture of me with the Cure JM banner:

There are several things to note in the above picture.  Firstly, I was swimming in my long sleeves – enjoying being cool, and knowing that my shirt would be dry soon after leaving the water – so why NOT use it for sun protection, as well?  Another thing to note is the silvery boat to the right of the picture.  There were tour boats that were in this 2^nd gorge, and while swimming, we had to look out for them. . .  We could have kayaked, further, but just didn’t have the time.  And lastly, do you see that beach-looking thing to the right of the picture?  It is a nice sandy beach, and when Ed and I swam up to it, we discovered that it had a “keep off – crocodile nesting area” sign on it!!!!  Ok, so this beach, that is off of this pool of water that we’re swimming in is a crocodile nesting sight, but this pool is safe to swim in?  The mind is boggled. . .

 Here’s another picture looking up the gorge, and you can see that crocodile nesting beach on the left:

 

with beautiful red rock under foot. .

From the water, I took the following shot in the other direction:

I like the above picture, because it has Jay in it, looking at his surroundings, giving perspective of the size of the surroundings.

Ah, it was beautiful and cooling and pleasant, but we had to move on, so we took the short hike back to the first gorge, and got in the kayaks we’d left on the shore, and kayaked back:

Ed and Rebecca, enjoying the shade, and the current taking them back.

Later, as we drove west, but still in the Australia’s Northern Territory, we stayed in a cabin at a caravan park that pretty much constituted the entire inland town of Timber Creek.  Here, they advertised that every day, they feed the crocodiles, and here, the crocodiles were “freshies” – that is, freshwater crocodiles (the second type that were mentioned on that Jim Jim Falls sign, way above); and that is opposed to the “salties” that were pictured, above, which are salt-water crocodiles.

One of the most noticeable differences is the shape of their heads.  Here’s what the “freshie” head looks like:

The snout is much narrower than the Saltie’s snout.  One guy claimed that these guys wouldn’t be able to kill us – that if they did grab an arm, they’d break their snout, because it wasn’t as powerful as the Saltie’s snout.  I don’t know about that, but it does jive with that sign that suggests that Salties can maime and kill, but Freshies only maime. . .  However, I’m not sure that I’m going to ever test that theory. . .  Here, at this river, they tempted the freshies with much smaller bits of meat than what we saw used to tempt the salties.

Here’s one freshie making his way over to us:

And then another shot of one right next to the bridge where we were all standing, while the one person tempted them with meat:

These guys definitely didn’t launch their whole bodies out of the water as the salties did.

And with that, our crocodile adventures ended. 

Here’s to enjoying crocodiles from a position of safety!

Leora

Honeymoon #3 (Australia) - The Map & Driving

On August 12, 2015, we hopped on a plane for Australia (honeymoon #3) and, on October 24, went over to New Zealand (honeymoon #4), and didn’t return until November 19, 2015.  It was a long trip (over 15,000 photos!), so I’ll attempt to give a bunch of little short stories over the next months (before we head off for more adventures!) about the travels.

Here is the map overview (click any picture to enlarge that picture):

With details visible here (for the interested: you can see all of the places we went, and our route – you can zoom in, and you can switch to a satellite mode).

What is pictured above turned into 13186 miles (21220 kilometers) of travel!

Fortunately, before we got into a rental car, we had a “soft landing”.  Friends, Peter and Elizabeth, who happened to live near Sydney, picked us up and took us to their house, which backs onto some park land.  This allowed us to recover from our flight, get used to having to drive on the left hand side of the road, without having to actually *do* the driving, get a wonderful introduction to the local birds (gorgeous cockatoos, galahs, parrots of all sorts) and plants, and hear about the local animals, most of which exist (in the wild) only in Australia.  This gave us a wonderful base of knowledge for the rest of our trip around Australia.

The above sign was mostly seen on the roads to and from Uluru (Ayers Rock).  Another park had painted arrows showing the direction of travel in a lane in front of pull-offs, or upon exiting a dirt road.

We actually had one timeline on our trip, and that was having to be in Darwin (where we also have friends) on August 26, to pick up Ed (travel buddy and friend from high school era) and Rebecca (wife of a high school friend who has joined us on a couple of occasions) who were flying in.  We were advised by many to fly to Darwin (extreme middle north of the country) from Sydney (south east of the country), because it’s so far, but Jay and I had been driving all over the US, and loved it, so, why not do that in Australia, as well?  When we rented a car, and told the rental agent our plans, he physically backed away from us, started to ask us “Do you know how far that is?” stopped mid-question, looked beseechingly at Peter, who’d accompanied us to get the car, and asked him if he’d explained to us just how far it is?  Peter nodded his head, and told him that we understood the task we were taking on.  And, away we went. . .  we started from Sydney late afternoon on August 17^th, and made it to Darwin, going some 3000 miles ( 4828km), by the 24^th.

That segment of the trip taught us many things about driving in Australia.  We noticed that Australia’s roads are, in general, narrower than those in the US, and, except for areas very close to the major cities (of which there are only a few), there are no major highways, like the interstate highway system in the US. We soon learned that the major roads, on which we would be spending the majority of our time, were these 2 lane roads, sometimes wide-ish and most of the time, narrow. We also learned that finding a place to stay by about 4 pm was the wisest move, for many reasons, but mainly because we didn’t want to be caught driving at dusk, when most of Australia’s wildlife wake up and start moving around, most notably, the kangaroos.  The first couple of days, we had some very close calls with kangaroos, and after that, we stuck to full daylight for driving:

Besides having to get used to which side to drive on, we also had to get used to where in the lane the car is, because, if you’re used to driving on the right side of the road, the car extends a little bit beyond you on the left, and a LOT on the right.  Well, if you drive on the left side of the road, the bulk of the car is to the LEFT of you, so positioning the car is a little different.  I believe that folks used to driving on the right tend to lose a lot of the left-hand car mirrors when driving on the left side of the road.  Fortunately, we never lost any pieces of the car, but the left tires did spend some time off of the left side of the narrow road. . .

Another detail is that the signal lever is on the right hand side of the steering wheel (unlike in the US), while the windshield wipers are on the left.  The windshield wipers were constantly going, whenever a turn was anticipated. . .  What I found even more amusing is that *after* we returned, Jay, having never really gotten used to the signals being activated by the right hand, was constantly reaching for the signal lever with the right hand after we returned!!! 

Neither of us had any difficulty returning to the right hand side of the road, upon returning to the USA, which actually surprised me for myself, as I’d gotten quite accustomed to being on the other side of the road, and being on the right hand side of the road would scare me, in Australia or New Zealand, and so I was afraid that I’d yell at Jay to get on the other side of the road, mistakenly, after returning.  Hasn’t happened, though (thankfully)!

I noticed that there are some things that I’ve internalized from living in the US for so long.  One thing that I’ve internalized is that yellow separates lanes going in different directions.  Well, in Australia, those clues do not exist.  White dash lines exist between lanes going in the same direction, as well as going in different directions, but it took a while for me to understand why the roads seemed so confusing to me.  Australia does use yellow, but usually to mean that there are parking restrictions, and that yellow is near the curb.  (Yellow on the curb is frequently used for a similar purpose, usually “no parking” in the US, but not quite in the same location on the road as it is in Australia.)  There was one National Park that had no lines on most of the roads, and then, instead of marking the middle of the road, it put in yellow lines on the side of the roads (don’t park!).  With the narrow roads, oncoming cars would frequently join us in our lane, which was quite nerve-wracking, so I thought that if at least the midpoint were marked, then they would KNOW that they were joining us. . .

In the Northern Territory (where Uluru/Ayers Rock and Darwin are located), there were stretches of road where there was no speed limit.  So, naturally, Jay had to see how fast he could go.  The car’s limit was 200km/hour, which is a little over 124miles/hour:

However, as the speedometer went up, the fuel indicator went down. . . rapidly.  We started to worry if we’d make it to the next gas station, usually quite distant, in those parts, like maybe 150kms(93miles) distant.  Fortunately, we didn’t out drive our capacity, ever.  But speaking of gas stations, we experienced anywhere from about $1.29/liter on the really cheap side, to more commonly $1.60/liter, to sometimes $2.00/liter, which is about $5, $6.5, and $8 per gallon in Australian money.  This translates to anywhere between $3 to $4.8 to $6/gallon in US dollars.

One other joy we had were the Road Trains.  They are kind of like semi trucks.  Here, in Oregon, we sometimes have triple trailer trucks, and they are definitely long – there is no doubt, but Australia wins the length award, with trucks sometimes hauling 4 railroad-sized train “cars” behind them (in this picture, there are only 2):

Note that the van in front is driving off to the side, and that the Road Train takes up most of the width of the lane.  Here is a sign warning about the Road Trains: 

53.5meters is 175ft!   For comparison, in Oregon, the maximum length for a semi with 2 trailers, without a special permit, is 60ft.  Passing a Road Train was exciting, in a nervous sort of way. . .

I got a kick out of this, when I saw it – a truck towing a 3-car Road Train:

At least, that’s what appeared to be happening, to us. . .

Regardless of any difficulties in driving, we still preferred it to flying internally, within the country.  The car became our traveling “home” even though we always either camped or found a place to stay, frequently in a hostel or backpacker place.  And, although we rented a darkish grey car in Perth, we wound up with a reddish tinged car:

before we took it to the car wash before returning it.  The red came from all of the red dirt roads:

May you always know which side of the road to drive on. . . (And which way to look when crossing the road!)

leora