Day 24: Bye bye Kakadu!

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All good things must come to an end, and our visit to Australia’s most famous National Park is not different. We actually have nothing planned for today, and decided to totally wing it. We’ll make up stuff along the way, we know we need to be at the airport at a certain time to hand in the car and catch a flight to Cairns, but that is all.

We received a good tip from another couple to visit Berry Springs, and that was an awesome tip! The springs actually have warm water, which makes the three pools nicely warm as well. The upper pool has its own (miniature) waterfall, the main pool is of course the largest, and the lower pool is nice and quiet. We have had a luscious swim in the pools, and enjoyed watching the fish. They were Archer Fish, and just ignored the swimmers as they went on to do the things fish generally do. There are not Estuarine Cricodiles here, just some Freshwater ones, but they generally do not attack humans. 🙂

The Arnhem Highway crosses the Adelaide River, and on this river, there are multiple companies offering “Jumping Crocodile Tours”. They are also quite cheap! But as these crocodiles have learned to just feed on the stuff the boats hang out for them, all natural behaviours on them have vanished. And this is in a country where nearly all animals have their own sign saying not to feed the wildlife! The cruises hang a large piece of meat over the water, and entice the croc to ‘catch’ is by yanking it higher the moment the croc wants to take a bite. Even though it is their natural capability to jump out of the water like that, it feels odd. And so, we moved on.

The last stop for today was a place called Howard Springs, which is really close to Darwin. Due to the saltwater crocodiles there was no swimming allowed, so we just relaxed a bit and learned something about the history of the place and its role in WWII. (Recreational, as it was being used as a retreat for the soldiers on duty in the Darwin Area)

Handing in the car was a sad moment for us, as it is really new still. We drove around 1350kms in it, and it even smells new! The flight to Cairns was about 2 and a half hours, and was very quiet. The transfer to the hotel was swift, and the weather over here is nice as well. Tomorrow, we have no plans, but we heard there’s a place where you can lie on a beach!