TOD Tour 2.0 Day 50 - Yellow Waters Cruise

A defining end to a special day is captured in this sunset photo taken on the Yellow Waters Billabong, just off the South Alligator River.

We went on this cruise with very high expectations. We'd done it before ... and before that. We'd been captivated by the beauty of Kakadu and its ferocious wildness, its diversity and its uniqueness. We'd seen creatures that took your breath away and those that wanted to take your breath away ... and we'd sat through that sunset before. Couldn't be as good again, could it? It wasn't. It was better.

I had thought that being here at the end of the dry season would be a bad thing, mostly because the water levels would be so low and habitats so shrunken but I had factored it wrong. The shrinking waterways actually concentrate birds and animals into a smaller space. Even the plants that are still flowering, are doing so prolifically. As a result, our cruise was a smorgasbord of flora and fauna.

So many birdies and everywhere you looked. Egrets are here in abundance, particularly the Cattle Egrets, who make their living picking ticks and other bugs off the soon to be culled buffalo. The most destructive force in Kakadu are these introduced hooved monsters, who destroy the water verges with their wallowing. Pigs and brumbies and the next worst in creating havoc.

In our two and a half hours we saw lots of birds but some were special: like the Azure Kingfisher, which dipped and dived into the water from its perches about a metre of the river. In between it sat there boldly displaying its striking blues and orange. A giant Sea Eagle perched on the highest branch of the highest tree in order to find a lazy fish with its razor sharp eyes and then dive down on it silently to remove it to it dinner table. A Whistling Kite, a populous member of the feathered clans in the Northern Territory was watching its nest and calling to anyone who would listen. Thousands of Brown Whistling Ducks were on either bank. A loving pair of Shiny Flycatchers were darting about the water's edge. Jacana were defying science by appearing to walk across the water from lillypad to lillypad, their actions giving an obvious explanation for their nickname of Jesus Bird. The rare Great Billed Heron, a really tall bird, stood shyly searching for treats until we got too close and then almost serenely rose into the air for a short flight to a nearby fallen tree. A Darter emerged from the river and flew to dry ground and then held its wings, wet, glossy and black, out in a crucifix pattern to dry. Its a bird that hunts in the water and yet, its feathers are not waterproof.


A Black-Necked Stork, more commonly known as a Jabiru, stood in stately array with one leg held up against the other, even in the face of an approaching crocodile.

Crocodiles.

We saw plenty of those ancient hunting machines. Virtually unchanged since the dinosaurs, they are an awesome beast. Estimates at this time of the seasons - they don't say year up here because the seasons have no fixed calendar date - have the South Alligator River populated with 100 saltwater crocodiles for every kilometre of river. Even the smallest give you pause for thought and a clear understanding of why tour operators run flat bottomed, untipable boat. We must have seen ten or eleven crocs but without doubt, one mean looking specimen which was cooling itself - they have their mouth open - on the lower bank, right beside the water, was just plain scary. More than four and a half meters long (15ft or the length of our van) and weighing over 500kg, the damned thing was monsterous from up close and up close we got. Apparently, even the biggest saltwater crocodile can propel itself from the water a distance of five metres to grab unsuspecting prey and they can do this from being completely submerged and explode from the water at about 80km/hr.


The bow of our boat got within three metres of Mr Crocodile. I didn't smile. I taught Kindergarten. I knew the protocol. I moved from unnerved, to scared, to fetch my brown corduroys.

This amazing cruise finished where we started back on the Yellow Waters Billabong ... about where this blog started, watching the sunset. We were all silent. There was just the slow plink, plink, plink of water on the aluminium hull, birds calling their regrets of incomplete tasks and others, like the Rufous Night Heron, getting started on their night rounds. It was magic really.

Click for today's photos

For Sue, the magic started earlier in the day at the Warradjan Cultural Centre, where she sat with Elder Violet Lawson, one of the custodians of the land and learned how to weave pandanas into ornamental bangles. Sue repaid her in kind, noticing her struggling with a sore back, so showing her the exercises she does. Violet would catch up with Sue the next day to say thanks and report the exercise as helping.

This place has seeped into our bones ... again.