Kakadu dreams..In search of new waters. pt 3

After the loss of the Heddon baby torpedo, I brought out the back-up lure; River 2 sea tango prop! A lovely, noisy little surface fizzer that quickly caught the attention of the river's inhabitants. This big Saratoga mistook it for something tasty. Note how unscathed the body still is!

After a few days on the river I managed to hurt my right leg, probably from jumping down a bank. It meant limping was the order of the day and after the first move of camp downstream I was pretty stuffed after pushing the bike for 10km. The weather was warming up too, which seemed to bring out many more blood-sucking March flies, which I wasn't really in the mood for! So a short siesta was in order.

As I passed a big Paper Bark swamp, I noticed a group of pigs working the margins, so I quietly sat down under a tree and watched as they came around the swamp in my direction. That's sometimes the beauty of the bicycle - it's quiet so you can come and go undetected whereas in a car it's usually over before you know what's around the corner. Eight adult pigs and 4 piglets intently dug and nosed the swamp until they were 40 yards from me. As you can imagine, being feral animals, they are not overly popular, particularly in the national parks. Along with the pigs, water buffalo and horses cause a significant amount of damage to the ecology of the park, so in the last decades culling programs have been introduced. Although many thousands of buffalo have been removed, judging by the spoors, many still remain.

Even if my bike had been less loaded and if my leg had been less painful, I probably would have still pushed for 50km on this track. An extremely uneven surface has resulted from buffalo wandering around on the clay in the wet season. Some short patches were smooth sand, but these were few and far between. At least I could pass the time counting numerous trees :)

I passed many swamps on my search for new fishing grounds and most were decorated with a few different types of water lily. These small flowers covered an area of a couple of hectares; a pretty sight indeed amongst the surrounding dry, brown bushscape.

My trusty bike that has so far carried me for 20,000 km around the world. A little overloaded at this point!!

Although the river wasn't particularly deep, I chose to remove my luggage to cross instead of pushing. The track on the far bank was deep bull dust (fine dust) that loves to stick to wet things. Not good for the drive chain so worth the extra effort to cross. It also seemed pretty crocodile safe, which was good, otherwise I could easily have waited for a day before a car came to help me across.

To find the river again meant leaving the track and pushing through the bush for a km or two -  sometimes open and easy, like here, and sometimes thick making it hard going. However, Graham had found some very detailed maps for me and had also lent me his GPS, which made things a lot easier. At least I wasn't stabbing in the dark, but had a fair idea of where I was heading.

Early morning trying to get over a night of mosquito trauma. My tent zip had given up on me the evening before after long service of maybe 700+ nights. Not bad going, and it had to happen sooner or later, but next to a Kakadu swamp wasn't the best place for it to break. At least Graham had left me a can of RID ... I owe you one mate!

Finding a fishing spot was often hard along the deep stretches of the river. Twisted bamboo thickets and other thick vegetation often cloaked the river bank, but where it was possible to make a cast, a hook-up would usually result. There was always the thought of sneaky, sly crocodiles watching me, so one spot would never be fished for too long or too regularly. The idea of getting plucked from the bank and dragged into the river was always on my mind so I stood in trees, hopefully far enough out of reach! On the Adelaide river there are famous jumping crocodiles tempted out for the tourists. Seeing those photos made me realise I was probably in easy reach for our reptilian friends, so maybe I'm just very lucky or too skinny for them to take an interest?
This lovely Saratoga was the second to take a liking to my home made spinner. NICE!

One day when I was idly lying around avoiding the hot sun at siesta time I spotted the Simpson's toxic fish lure hanging from my handle bar bag. Marion had given it to me back in Perth and, looking at it now, I started to wonder what would happen if I threw in the river. So I rigged it with a couple of Owner hooks and headed down to the water. It turned out to be a fairly effective surface lure and, after 20 strikes in around an hour, I was convinced! Unfortunately hook-ups weren't happening very often, probably due to it's shape, so I went back to the fizzer.

A decent Barramundi that took a liking to the toxic fish

The colours start to show on a fine Sooty Grunter as the sun begins to set

The insect life was rich along the river. This Praying Mantis came for a closer look at what I was up to and decided to clean its legs whilst sitting on my arm. The diversity of spiders was also vast and everywhere I looked a new variety would appear, usually on the lookout for prey. Not everyone's cup of tea, but paradise for me!

The Shallows, late evening. The great beauty of the river here is that there are many crossing points where the crocodiles can't make a surprise attack. I was convinced, though, that every night a crocodile moved into this area to feed on the abundant fish. I can't believe a kg Barra can make a splash like a man jumping into the river so must have been crocy. It was always late and I was always tucked up in bed and too lazy to go on midnight crocodile forays.

A lovely looking Archer Fish that had to have the little spinner

I quickly took this shot a moment after a crocodile had tried to annihilate my trusty frog. I got the distinct impression he didn't like the plop plop plop noise the frog kept making as it swam over his head. The strike caused a rather impressive splash and at the same moment I struck the lure out of the way.