DAY 56 - MANBULLOO TO TIMBER CREEK.

A rather longish drive today with not a lot along the highway.  No town of any size now until we get to Kununurra.  Our goal today was to make it as far as Timber Creek where we planned to stay the night at the Circle F Caravan Park.  

John and Barb had been through here a fortnight earlier and had told us that on a Saturday afternoon at 5pm,   they feed the resident Crocs in the creek behind the caravan park and they feed the Kites, which is really quite spectacular as they, dart and dive for the meat thrown to them.  

We had a pretty uneventful drive and stopped for morning tea at Victoria River.  There is a caravan park there too, but it had no shade, and was a bit of a dust bowl, so were rather glad we were pushing through to Timber Creek.  However,  the scenery started to change around here and we enjoyed the next part of our drive...

Some of the amazing scenery around Victoria River

Victoria River

We arrived at Timber Creek around 2.30pm in the afternoon, and set up under some lovely shady trees.  As we were both feeling, a little tired we ended up having a bit of a nanna nap and then spoke to Sarah and the children as surprisingly we had a phone coverage and some internet. It has been a pretty long week of no contact whilst we were up in Litchfield National Park.

 

Feeding the Crocs at Timber Creek.

 Ian and Kathy came by our van to collect us about 4.50pm to go walk down to the bridge where the Croc feeding was to take place.  Only one big croc came in to be fed today.  He was a 3mt male called “Alfie”.  That is about as big as a fresh water croc will grow.  He is a bit of an old boy now, but he did jump for his meat for us, and he did it several times.  I was fortunate to be standing on the bridge next to the owner who comes down to feed them, so I managed to get a few good photos.  

Whistling Kites in Timber Creek

Feeding time for the Kites.

There are a lot of bush fires around Timber Creek at present, so he wasn’t sure how many Kites would be in today for a feed, as they work the fires pretty well, looking for the small animals that are trying to escape the blaze.  

The owner feeding the kites..

Steve having a go at feeding the kites

He really wasn’t expecting too many, but we were all presently surprised when quite a few flew in.  He threw up several pieces for meat for the birds to dive down and collect, and then he gave us an opportunity to throw some meat up into the air.  Steve had a go, and the birds swooped down and grabbed the meat he threw.  I also had a good, but maybe I couldn’t get it high enough because they seemed to miss mine.  In the end, one of the kites dived down and grabbed it off the ground. 

We were pleased that we got to be around to watch this.   It was a nice van park too, large, with lots of shady trees, an although not a lot of grass, there was a carpet of leaves on the ground which at least settled the dust and didn’t make the area as dirty as some of the previous parks we had been in.  

We were also able to remain hitched, which was a bonus, as we wanted an early start again in the morning as we headed to the border of Western Australia.

We also needed to have a big cook up tonight as we were not allowed to take fruit, vegetables and honey over the border, so we were making vegetable soups,  cooking potatoes and vac sealing them, cooking all our pumpkin,   and we ended up making a large pot of mince and vegetables for dinner….  It is amazing how creative you can become when you don’t want to waste any of your food.  

Tonight was our last night in the NT.  We have totally enjoyed our 8 weeks up here and feel there is still so much more to see.  I hope that we get to come back again another day… I feel so blessed that we have had the opportunity to travel like we are doing, especially before we are too old to enjoy it.  Feeling blessed indeed.