Page 252 - Mit dem Wohnwagen durch Australien

upstream over the crossing. The swim with large open mouth and elegantly displayed front paw over the crossing
and immediately turn into the flood. They wait. Fishing is strictly forbidden at Cahill Crossing, therefore there are a
number of fishermen doing just that. A large truck and a Troopy make it through the fast current. The water is only
70 cm over the road, but quite torrential. A heavy vehicle can still manage. The crocs are still on the prowl. All of a
sudden one of them moves and with the speed of lightning catches a large fish. It devours it in three gulps and
comes back to the waiting predators. Today the menu is only fish. But they also had people; Homo sapiens fisher
and homo sapiens driver when a driver overestimated his skills and the weight of his car and was drifted off the
causeway.

The title picture of today’s Newspaper shows a small rubber dinghy heavily loaded with six fat bum tourists sitting on
the rim in the Alligator River and hanging enticingly low over the water. We have seen a large croc there two days
ago. A Croc can easily jump 3 m out of the water and swims with about 35 km/h no was to escape for humans
swimming. People can be soooo dummmb! No joking with nature here.

DARWIN
Meanwhile we know what it means to live in the tropics. It is at present not overly hot, about 34 to 36 C but humid
between 70 and 99 %. Most of all, the temperature does not fall below 25 C at night and the humidity stays the
same, just as in a Sauna. Here, Aircondo is a must for us. Since Kakadu, we need electricity and therefore have to
go into Caravan parks. In Jabiru, in the Kakadu National Park we even had our own shower and Toilet right next to
the caravan. Really luxurious. Nice, but not really necessary. We chose the Campground closest to Darwin City. It
is close to the airport, and RAAF airfield. Luckily, they only start mid morning for their patrol flights over the northern
waters to protect the Australian border. We have a couple of things to deal with here. I have passed my quarterly
medical check and all is well. We will visit our friend Brigitte Weber in Vietnam in October and had to get a visa, flight
tickets, and passport photos for the Visa etc. We will then be in Broome, but the flights will go from Darwin. This
poses a slight problem. The inland flights Broome Darwin Broome, cost considerably more than the two flights
Darwin Ho-Chi-Minh City Darwin, plus the inland flight goes at impossible times, so we have to stay over in Darwin
for a night. We will manage.

Because Darwin has everything one needs, Beat very timely decides to get a tooth infection. This gives us the
opportunity to visit a super modern Dentist clinic. The x-rays are directly transmitted to a screen and Beat can watch
TV during the whole operation and tooth extraction. He gets some antibiotics and painkillers, gauze balls to put into
the hole and a list with six points on what to do and what not. He should rest and not over exercise, to which he takes
like fish to water. With so much care he is already much better.

We are interested in the role Darwin played in the Second World War Before our visit we did not know, that Darwin
had been bombed 64 times by the Japanese in 1942 and a lot of people in the Territories had to be evacuated. We
see here the pacific side of WWII what the war and numerous other disasters did not achieve, was accomplished by
tropical cyclone Tracy in 1974. It laid 80 % of Darwin in ruins. The remnants of the old City Hall are preserved as a
war memorial in the middle of the City.

Spring is in the air and it should still be dry. However, it rained quite heavily the last two days and has shown us how
it would be to live here in the wet; much hotter and just as humid. The predictions are that an early and heavy
monsoon and cyclone season should be expected. There were heavy rainfalls again in the south of the country and
Victoria is getting a sorely expected drenching in areas where the 12 years drought has finally been broken. In
Birdsville the famous races had to be cancelled for the first time in 100 years because of flooding. About 3000
guests who had already arrived were stranded for 5 days. They drank the pub dry before they could drive out again.
The welcome rainfalls in the South mean also, that a huge locust plague is in the making. The farmers have
counted 10’000 Locust larvae per m2 earth in some areas. Some farmers have already seen clouds of locust
measuring 3 km times 9 km. They will eat the whole lovely grain crop which has finally grown after the big drought.
The Spray Planes are flying non-stop over the infected areas in order to get rid of that plague. The locusts follow an
epic mice plague of never seen proportions. The little rodents ate the seeds as fast as it was brought out. Whole
areas looked like moving gray earth.