Day 13: Darwin and the March Home

That day, the only thing I had planned was Crocosaurus Cove. We got up and checked out of our hotel around 10 and headed for a local mall for coffee. The only noteworthy places to see in downtown Darwin are Mitchell St and Smith St. which is just a series of shops. There are also some WW2 tunnels which would have been cool to see, but we never did. After coffee, we went to a local rocky beach. There we found an abundance of sea glass and cool looking rocks. By 12, I left for Crocosaurus Cove. For $165 I was going to cage dive with a crocodile. Sarah didn’t want to spend that money, so she went to a free art museum. (She also told me that she found the main beach that people in Darwin go to. I forget what it is called, but it starts with an M I believe.

Crocosaurus Cove is basically a small reptile zoo. On the ground floor are tanks where you can see about 6 full size crocs and also a tank where you can see some big river fish. When you go to the stairs, you get a better view of the reptiles. Along with the aforementioned, there is an area with baby crocs, a café, a turtle pond, a tank filled with juvenile crocs, another tank containing a big croc, a crocodile house where you can hold baby crocs, and a reptile house. It was rather interesting and would take 2-3 hours to see everything. The crocodiles were that active that day though as there were cloudy skies. The night before, it got a “chilly” 19*c. I viewed all of the exhibits and then went diving. Basically, there is a row of four tanks, and they move the cage to the one they think will be the most active. They chose Axel for me, a 5.8-meter 470 kg croc. He was massive, but you could tell that he was reluctant to do anything. Nevertheless, they coaxed him out with food, and he swam around. However, he never got up right next to the cage I was in (which was a cylindrical plastic tube) so that was a little disappointing. But the whole thing was still really cool.

After the cove, I met up with Sarah and we went to return the car. After we did that, we had to walk all of our stuff back to Smith St; that took about 20 minutes. We just hung out there and window shopped. I wanted to buy a crocodile skin wallet but they were about $300-400. So that was out of the question. I did buy a cool aboriginal one though. Afterwards we had a quick dinner and went to the airport to finally fly home.

This trip was one of the coolest trips I’ve ever done. I’m also extremely proud of myself for planning this monstrous trek. Travelling by car is by far the best way to see Australia. It also made me realize just how enormous it is. Doing this trip has inspired me to do other Aussie road trips in the future. For me, I think THE highlight was the shark diving; Kings Canyon, the Kangaroo Sanctuary, and Uluru were pretty high up on there too. It really was an unforgettable trip.

Kakadu | Surf Camp