Fishing, Flooded Roads, and Crocs

The East Alligator River crossing (poorly named by some crazy British explorer, there are no alligators here) between Kakadu National Park and Arnhem Land is about 70km upstream from the ocean. At low tide the river is flowing normally, and the crossing has about 10 centimeters of water running over it. It can easily be crossed in a four wheel drive vehicle. As the tide comes in, the water starts flowing back in the opposite direction until the crossing is covered by over half a meter of water. The area attracts four things: drivers crossing the river, fishermen, crocs, and gawkers (us).

We also didn’t see anybody get his car overturned while doing the crossing, but every time one drove across all the fishermen stopped to watch.

From what we heard, a truck overturns here once a year. At high tide there were more than a few trucks that approached the edge of the crossing, paused for a little bit, and then started quickly backing away. Discretion is the better part of valor.

The other entertainment for the fishermen was playing find the croc. This one was maybe 40 yards away from where most of them were fishing.

And then a guy in a boat showed up to fish. And he tied up his boat 6 feet from where a crocodile just submerged. The croc was almost as big as the boat, Mekayla said I might finally get some scale for taking pictures of the croc.

Now I know that these guys have probably been fishing croc infested waters all their lives so maybe it isn’t a big deal, but one of the fishermen on the bank yelled out “You do know that there is a croc there don’t you?” and the guy just went on starting to fish. We weren’t sure if he hadn’t heard, or had seen it and didn’t care, or if he was just crazy.

So let’s review: trucks fording through river, fishermen on the banks, crazy boat fishermen, Aussie bravado, and salt water crocodiles. This is the most entertaining spot on the planet. We returned here many times.