Just outside Kakadu National Park and up towards the gulf is a place called Shady Camp.  This had been recommended to us by various travellers who, just like Paj, were in search of a place to catch a Barramundi.  Alas, we were there 4 nights and didn’t come away with one. Paj caught a couple of small ones but as they were under the legal limit they were put back.

The camp was a ranger operated one next to the Mary River and right near a causeway that was used as private access to a station up there. There was a lot of birdlife with a couple of resident Jabiru, herons and spoonbills, wallabies and a lot of crocodiles. There were always half a dozen crocodiles on patrol near the causeway on the freshwater side but we never saw any during the day on the saltwater side. One evening about 9.30pm we decided to go down with torches and have a look at the causeway. Well, on both sides of the causeway it was just a sea of red eyes!  Where all those crocodiles were during the day I have no idea.  Apparently the Mary River Wetlands are the most densely populated crocodile habitat in the country!

A young couple Paj had spent a lot of time fishing with came and joined us for dinner one night and we had a casserole done in the camp oven.  Gavin and Moni were from Busselton, near Perth and are about to head to New Zealand to work for a while. Gavin hadn’t had much luck with the fishing either.

Tony and Helen from Queensland arrived with a dinghy and he invited Paj to go out fishing with him in his boat.   They went out a couple of times but still caught nothing we could keep.  They just came back with stories of how many and how big the crocs were further up the river!  They joined us for dinner on our last night (a camp oven roast of veal and damper) and we exchanged phone numbers with the idea of catching up again in Darwin.

Heading East 2009

Part Three - SHADY CAMP