4 June 2013 – Humpty Doo, Croc Feeding on the Adelaide River and Mary River

Another eventful day was planned for today, as it is nearly every day, as we wanted to do the crocodile feeding tour and we’d heard that this was going to be awesome.  We weren’t disappointed!  Along the way to the Adelaide River, we stopped at the lovely named town of Humpty Doo.  I was expecting this town to be more than what it was just because of its cute name, but it was really just an outback town with a small shopping centre.  “Small” shopping centre does not mean something like the Richmond marketplace.  It is really just a few small shops but luckily there was a Woolworths to stock up on our supplies.  It was a bit of a hike through an extremely  large paddock to the boat that we were going to board to feed the crocodiles but the folk running this tour were awesome.  Especially Morgan our tour guide and croc feeder.  Thankfully, we didn’t have to lean out over the edge of our boat to feed these monsters ourselves because not only would the food have been taken, but without a doubt so too our arm and likely the rest of our body too.  As soon as we’d left the pontoon a massive crocodile called Dominator headed for us.  He would have been around 5 metres long with an absolutely massive head.  After meeting Dominator I have concluded that all crocodiles have their own personality and this fellow was not shy in the slightest.  Our boat was not much bigger than a large tinny but it did have a rail around the top of it which came up to about our waste which would have been good to lean on.  However, we were warned not to put any part of our body over this rail, and after seeing Dominator, my barking orders to the kids virtually continued the whole tour.  I was amazed to see how high some of these crocodiles were able to get out of the water, especially the younger ones that seemed to balance on the tips of their tails.  Whilst cruising up the river, Morgan also called in a few kites for feeding.  They are magnificent graceful birds to watch but I wouldn’t like to get too close to their claws.  The final crocodile we met was Brutus and he was about 80 years old, over 5 metres long and the most fearful of them all.  There were four crocodiles swimming in the same large area as Brutus but none would come near the boat while Brutus was about.  He was obviously the leader of this group and held the respect of them all.  Considering he only had 3 legs, it was surprising to see how fast he was at catching the dangling bait.  The adrenalin was still running through our blood as we got off the boat and Zoe was excitedly flashing her great photos to the owners of the tour.  Both the girls spent a bit of their own money on some crocodile toys before we jumped in the car and pulled into Mary River for the night.  There wasn’t much happening here but it was nice to enjoy a few cold wines and talk to some other campers before settling in for the night.