Day 146 - Tuesday 23 May - Crocs galore

Day 146

Tuesday

23 May 2017

Darwin

After a heavy night on the champagne, I was a little slow this morning, not waking til 7.45am, but once awake I was happy to get out and start our morning. We had breakfast and sat around lazily.

At 9.30am we drove out to Crocodylus Park to check out the animals they have in their zoo.

We paid the $55 a person entrance and then made our way through to the crocodile pond. I didn’t expect to see the crocs up against the fence as we walked through and I jumped and yelped on seeing the first one. Paul thought it was a great joke.

Connected to the pond are the breeding cages that we wandered through spying the crocs from the safety of the platform above. There were some MASSIVE crocs here. Signs all around us warned that they jump and bite, yeah no joke!  

A feeding session took place at 10am. Here we got to see the jumping croc display from the pond and then some people were able to feed the crocs in the breeding cages using a long pole with a chooks head attached with string.

When the feeding was over, we were ushered to the croc handling area. Two one-year old crocs were presented for people to hold. I wasn’t interested, but Paul was happy to have a hold. I stroked the head and belly and took photos before we wandered down towards the big cats. We stopped at the meerkats when the keeper came out to feed them with a group of tourists.

At the park they have white lions as well as tawny lions and we were able to watch the lions feed on some chunks of red meat. The white lions were hand reared by Tate, the keeper and seemed quite affectionate towards him, but he no longer gets in to the enclosure just in case.

After the feeding we walked past the tigers who were happy to be lazy, one was asleep with his tongue poking out. We made our way back to the croc handling area and waited again for Tate to take us out on the boat.

We were given strict instructions about staying inside the cage of the boat and to keep the balance of the boat. Hmm. We were also told that once we entered the pond we were no longer the apex predator, great.

We cruised on the pond, being told there were 43 crocs in the pond and we saw a fair few of them. Tate pulled out the feed to give “Sunshine” a feed. The pole was right next to me and when it jumped up it was right there. Paul took a photo and all he got was the underside of its belly!

We continued to croc spot as we cruised along, they were in the water and on the banks sunning themselves. I was glad the boat was remaining upright, I did not want to go swimming. They don’t have life jackets on board, because if we fell in they would be no use to us; another fact to make me feel completely at ease not. I was happy to return to the dock about 45min later and return to dry land.

We returned to the croc handling area and another keeper had a python out for people to hold, again I wasn’t going near it, but Paul happily took a hold. I was happy to take some photos of it as it made its way across various body parts.

With all the tour and meet the animal bits done, we made our way through the park checking out the animals. They had a few pythons and a curious iguana that was happy to come up close and say hi. I could have taken that one home.

We checked out the ostriches, the female was busy clucking over her clutch of 5 eggs, while the male was happy to follow you along the fence and give you the eye as well as bow down and sway around. I wasn’t sure if this was an aggressive move or a mating one.

We moved through the monkey enclosure and revisited the now sleeping lions, tigers and ocelot and then it was into the native animal enclosure where emus, dingoes, kangaroos and various birds could be found.

Finishing at this point, we returned to the snake and museum enclosure, checking out the different pythons before walking through the museum that outlined information about the different reptiles of the crocodilian family along with skeletons skins and stuffed animals.

Before leaving we picked up some croc sausages for dinner and then we made our way into the city for lunch. We found a place with lunch for $12.50 with a drink and put in our order before finding a place to sit and wait. We read the local paper and watched the news then ate our salads before returning to six tanks for a beer.

At 2 we made our way back to the van, donned our bathers and took off for the pool, happy to bob around and chat to other travellers. It wasn’t as warm or humid today and there had been a pleasant breeze, but it was still great to cool off.

Once back at the van, I went through the photos while Paul organised to meet with the One Mile brewers later in the week. He also caught up with Darryl Anderson and will probably catch him at some stage too.

Paul went to the BBQ to cook up our crocodile sausages while I put the salad together. They were yummy but tasted like chicken.  
After our dinner we wandered back to the pool for our evening swim and cool down. We bobbed about listening in on others' conversations before returning to the van ready for an early night.