21/03/2026
Hi all
It has been a long time for an actual update on both our ‘river mates’ and the river as such!
We lost our pontoon when Cyclone ‘Fina’ passed by, a welded cleat on the old pontoon gave way and it capsized! There was a long delay in righting it up as we had no low tides enough to get to the bottom and detach the components for lifting! It’s a bit hard going into the water with a couple of the locals standing by and hoping to score an easy meal!
We had Betty( of the jetty ) and another crocodile just a bit bigger than her within 5 metres of us as we were working on it!
No room for slips there!
The new Pontoon is ready to go in, we just have to let ‘Narelle’? Pass by! Who knows what water we will get out of that!
The river was flooded big time this year, but the Arnhem Highway either side of the bridge did not go under the water due to the highway upgrade in the last few years! There were a few extra culvert/bridges put in and they were all packed with local people having a go at catching a ‘Barra’, So don’t know if they caught much but they were having a great time! Picnic set ups and families out doing something different! There was a tricky element though, the crocs forage the edge of the floods and a few people were a bit close to the waters edge!
Live and learn I guess or more possibly not live and learn!…
We did lose one of our regular crocs it went up on the highway chasing the road kill and got hit by a vehicle! It was a tad under 3 metres long and attracted a lot of attention still being on the side of the road for a few days after! It did disappear but I don’t know if another croc took it away or someone souvenired it!
The Croc’s will return to their territories as the river recedes, although a few of the non territory owning crocs could easily have taken up residence in places opened up by the flooding, backyards and waterholes that are normally isolated from the creek systems! So early dry season explorers better be well ‘en garde’.
It will be interesting to see if the status quo has been maintained with the large dominant males in the river, we had a reset of Territories with a new Alpha inserting himself into the mix and a reset of their boundary lines last year!
So now we have ‘Sneaky’ in the first territory of the river, then ‘Nasher’ who also owns the Marrakai creek junction and took over ‘Aggros’ space when he died, then ‘Turbo’ the new big kid on the block, who was nearly killed by big ‘Nash’, but has survived and seems to have now gained his space in the system, then of course up top we have ‘Chad’ (AKA Chad Morgan). A doughty old fella that doesn’t want to extend his Territory or make new conquests, so him and ‘Turbo’ quickly came to an understanding as to ‘the boundaries’!
Not so ‘Nasher and Turbo’ they still have to finalise the marker line in the river for their territories, their epic fight last year almost saw ‘Turbo’ get decapitated, but big ‘Nash’
got a hell of a fright as well, so that might be, all over bar the shouting, we will see!🥹
Hopefully, we will be up and running by the start of April, but the weather is very tricky at the moment!