We were up before 6am in Darwin to catch our floatplane at Paspaley Hangar. Our pilot was Emma, a twenty something, fast talking, very pretty blonde who marshalled us onto the plane. Her copilot was a middle aged flyer of floatplanes in Broome who was being shown the ropes Darwin side. He had an interesting story about catching a mangrove jack fish which promptly got tangled in the line, so he went down to waterlevel to untangle things. He was fully concentrated on the fish, when he suddenly heard a loud hissing. Right between his legs was the snout of a croc who laid claim to the jack. The hissing was the sound of the croc expelling air from its flotation sacs.
Another six Aussies joined us on board. We flew out above the early morning mist, over creeks and mangroves, down to Sweets Lagoon.
After 25 minutes, we were banking hard to come in for landing on the billabong.
The floatplane swished in to land on the billabong, cruising past diving birds and birds of prey to the pontoon where airboat and chopper were parked.
The ground crew of three included Kal, the chopper pilot, Matt the airboat demon driver from Tassie, and a bright newbie lady bouncing with energy.
The trio prepped a cooked brekkie, showed us around the pontoon and that included a great viewpoint from the flat roof for photos of the morning mist rising over the waters whilst fish jumped. First off, we cruised majestically in a loop around the billabong, past whistling kites perched on palms, cormorants sunning with open wings, and kingfishers darting past.
We split into small groups, Gen and I went up in the chopper with Kal, lifting off over the water which somehow reminded me of a scene from Apocalypse Now.
We flew over the billabong, high above the airboat group out doing roaring spinturns, then landed next to cathedral termite mounds for a brief touchdown.
On our return flight we circled a large mango farm; and spotted a huge saltie sunning far below on the banks of the billabong.
Our first airboat sortie was a ripping run straight through narrow channels, hurtling over logs, tree trunks, and startled birdlife scattering for cover.
Our next airboat sortie was more sedate, taking us past Chug the croc's domain, demarcated by a massive white bellied sea eagle's nest, out to the rainforest channels.
En route we met Bonecrusher, a big saltie who charged up to the airboat with no concern about the noise. He got his name when a motorbike TV show did a piece on Darwin and came out to film here. The croc was thrown a buoy on a rope which he promptly attacked and gripped to tow the boat for 40 metres. The rope was cut, and Bonecrusher spent the day completely demolishing the buoy. Note: one of our group had us in stitches when he asked, "why a boy, why not a little girl?"
Next crocs we met were Speedy and Gonzales, two baby salties, just a metre long each, who played catch when Matt trailed a ball on a string.
For a change, we came across a freshie (freshwater croc) out on the bank unfazed by our noisy boat.
Travelling deeper into the forest, we came across Sweet Thing, a very large female saltie, who had solved her latest territorial tiff by killing her neighbour saltie. Not so sweet after all.
Matt likes his birds, so has trained a few to come close for fishy treats. A kingfisher swooped from an overhanging branch to catch a fish Matt threw onto the front of the boat, then perched on a branch and thwacked the fish to death.
As we continued, an egret suddenly flew straight into the boat, bounced off the front, and before we could blink, had perched on Matt's head. This was Rosie, Matt's bird, which he had been training for only a month to come for fish. She was now besotted with Matt and happily travelled around the billabong with him.
As we prepared to step off the pontoon onto the floatplane, the blonde pilot pointed out Otis, a whopper saltie, calmly circling the pontoon with lazy movements. To deter Otis from getting too nosey, the pilot had a big stick in one hand and helped us on with the other.
What a fun, interesting day out at Sweets Lagoon.
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