So after our adventure to Litchfield national park we got a taste for road tripping and were up bright and early ready for our 11am cruise on the Adelaide River. The trip was shorter - only 50 minutes and easy to find - not many roads/turn offs in the Outback! Our jumping crocodile experience started with us queuing to buy tickets and then queueing to get the best seat on the boat - for a change we were last again and had to sit down stairs behind the glass we were gutted but it soon emerged we had the best seats in the house, although behind glass they were literally centimetres away from you. The river was really murky and muddy but it was swarming with crocodiles just cruising along the river. Although the boat was not allowed to feed them within 500m of their loading bay as to not attract them to come too near civilisation! Apparently they are territorial and fight and taunt each other to be top dog - the size of them helps with this - some are 5m long. The guides knew their stuff and had named each one and explained their position in the river and any incidents that had occurred. Some had limbs or scars from fighting with each other. Our favourite was Michael Jackson - an albino crocodile which we later found out that he had been killed after eating a fisherman just after we visited - apparently the poor guy decided it would be a good idea to go into the river to unsnag his line, well done! What else did we learn about crocodiles ? They can run up to 25mph on land but only last for about 100m without tiring, and if you find yourself running up a tree to get away from one they will wait up to a week for you to come down, gutted. Their jaws are ridiculously powerful but only on the downwards biting action - so you can easily hold their mouths shut as they have no strength to open them. Last one - an alligator has a more square nose/mouth and something else but I can't remember what we were told ! Anyway the way these jumping crocodiles worked was pretty simple - dangle a big fat piece of meat off a string and they will jump up to catch it. We saw some pretty impressive jumps and pictures of them - pretty scary things close up! They also threw pieces of meat to attract some kites to fly around our boat much to Katy's pleasure! The cruise lasted about 1 hour 30 but was well worth it . So after a quick packed lunch again ruined by flys and me ruining my new shorts, we headed back towards Darwin to drop our car off - gutted about it we were enjoying our road trips! Xx
