Daly River - AIDAN'S BIRTHDAY - N.T.

Aidan turned 11 on the 13th June while we were at the Daly River. He didn't mind that we were not going to be able to celebrate his birthday the way we would normally celebrate at home, he could only get a small gift from us (we are limited on not only where we can go shopping but also space in the car) and we were not going to be able to have a party. But the one thing he said he would really like to do, knowing that we were going to be at the Daly River, was catch a Barramundi for his birthday. Well he certainly did that!! He caught two smaller Barramundi at the beginning of the day and followed it by this monster as seen below!

Aidan with his monster birthday Barramundi - one happy kid!

This fish is 84cm long and weighed 8.5kg. You could not find a happy kid that day, in fact it is now 4 days later and we still haven't got the grin off his face!! We ate some of the Barramundi that night while sitting around a camp fire, under the trees in a mango orchard! (Jaime was very happy with that scenario).

Our campsite in the Mango Orchard - unfortunately no fruit this time of year!

We had a great few days here at the Daly River. The owners of the property we stayed at were fantastic. They were a young couple with young kids who had just started School of the Air (Aidan and Cody actually gave the kids a bunch of their books they had finished reading while we have been away). There is a mango orchard on the property and that is where they have set up areas for camping. It was a great set up and they went out of their way to make sure that we were comfortable and that we had anything we might need, they also set up a TV so that we could watch State of Origin - GO THE BLUES! - we certainly enjoyed teasing the Queenslanders campers that night.
The Daly River itself was an experience as well. There are so many crocodiles on this river it was incredible, and that was just the crocs we could see. On one particular bend in the river we counted 11 crocodiles sunning themselves the first day and 15 the next! We also saw some of the biggest crocs we have seen to date.

Driving up the Daly River

There were also a lot of snags in the river which is very good habitat for fish but also means you tend to loose fishing lures and we lost a couple of lures, which is frustrating as they are expensive. But the good thing was we managed to spot a few that others had lost when the river was at a higher level so we came out even in the end. There was one lure, that we spotted on the bank, but it was only a few metres from a crocodile which was out sunning itself . We left it alone and came back later in the day but the croc was still there, so we thought we would just drive towards the bank and the croc should go into the water (they usually don't like boats getting too close to them), well this croc didn't want move, so Jaime grabbed a fishing rod and lent it out to hook onto the lure and retrieve it.  We got it, and the croc never moved. 

Jaime retrieving fishing lure off bank with small croc watching on (up bank on Jaime's left)