Berry Springs and Dundee Beach

August has arrived and several of our neighbours are making plans to head off from Darwin on their travels or head towards home.  Ted and Linda are due to leave for Townsville to visit Teds son and then home to Inverell and the Grandkids.  Richard and Barb are heading west around the coast following the same path that we will take.  Their daughter’s wedding here in Darwin went well and they have some great pictures of the reception in the grounds of Government & Parliament Houses.  It has been good comparing plans and working out places to visit.  Having lived in Darwin for 20+ years, Richard and Barb have been a great source of information and advice about places to see and things to watch out for around this area.  Both couples will be off in within the next week or so.

During this week we have worked at the Races on Wednesday and will be again today (Sat) and on Monday which is the big Darwin Cup day and a public holiday.  I may have mentioned previously that they sell 18,000 tickets to Monday s Races but there another 22,000 corporate or marquee bookings.  Apparently the crowd is around 40,000 each year.  Wednesday’s races were busy with a number of new groups of punters appearing from NSW & Vic.

We took a picnic out to Berry Springs this week and Garry had a swim.  These are a set of springs only 15 minutes away from the van park which run into 3 large pools and away down a small creek.  The springs are flowing strongly still and the pools are a couple of hundred metres long and 3 metres deep.  They are very popular with visitors and locals alike and have large grassed picnic area with plenty of BBQ’s and a small kiosk.  The water from the springs is a perfect temperature at exactly body temperature so that they can be enjoyed when the weather is cooler or warmer.

On Friday Garry and Ted were treated to some NT hospitality when Blane and Chris (from the Hardware) took us fishing out from Dundee Beach.  Blane has a large fishing “tinnie” (with a 150HP Yamaha outboard on the back) and we had a great day on the water.  The weather was perfect (as usual) and the sea was calm as we fished from off Dundee Beach and out to just off North Perron Island.  We caught a variety of fish including golden snapper (very similar to sweetlip), nanagai, parrot fish, stripies and batfish, and a couple of good sized spanish mackerel.  During the day we saw plenty of turtles, many with lazy seagulls standing on their backs hitching a ride, a small leopard shark, a sea snake, several dolphins, lots of portugese man-o-wars and other jelly fish, and a school of tuna boiling the surface, but the highlight of the trip was coming across a pod of whales on the way home.  There were 5 whales in the pod with 3 leading and a mother and calf following close behind.  They were a beautiful sight and looked so peaceful gliding along in their group, not at all worried about us.  The school of tuna was interesting to watch as they were either being chased to the surface or just busy rounding up bait fish for a feed because they were not eating anythings especially our lures which we dragged around and through them for more than half an hour without one strike.  We could even see the lures and fish in the waves together but no interest was shown in what we had to offer.

We got an early start from Dundee Beach so travelled out the night before and camped at the Pub / Van Park.  The pub has great views and a beautiful sunset but has especially cold beer and great meals eaten on the grass under the palm trees watching the sun set with endless fishing videos running on the big screen to get us all enthused for the following day.  It sounds an idyllic place but there is always a balancing area and at Dundee it is the sandflys and midges.  It was the worst time being within 3 days either side of the full moon but they are thick and repellent is required.  Luckily we had several varieties and I applied both bushmans and aeroguard and fortunately escaped un-bitten.  Both Ted and I had a great day and we will have some very nice fillets and mackerel steaks to enjoy in the coming days.