Mary River Wilderness Retreat

23 August 2017
Mary River

Today was spent hanging out at the Mary River Retreat. It is well set up with about 26 cabins plus caravan and camping sites located on the banks of the Mary River, we are about 120kms south east from Darwin. There are a mob of wallabies that help mow the lawn, a number of nasty crocs down by the river, and a multitude of bird life that all live here.

Our tour group has filled all the cabins but there are a few caravans and tents down closer to the river - I wouldn't be keen on being in a tent when there are crocs about but they reckon it is safe.

After breakfast T and I went for a walk around the grounds. The grounds are quite big and during the wet season they have been cut off because of the flood waters. We said hello to a few local wallabies and head up for a culture walk.

A local aboriginal bloke called Travis and his Mum (not birth mother, probably one of his aunties) came past to explain some things to us and to talk about how they use some of the local plants, Travis had just come back from 6 months in Melbourne and would be about 20. They gave us a proper 'Welcome to Country' greeting which involved sprinkling some water over our heads, very important as it shows respect to the spirits of their ancestors. He took us for a walk around the grounds explaining what some of the trees are and how they use them, some are for spears, some are for making dilly bags, some are for soothing teething children, and much more. He was really interesting and had a great sense of humour.

We had a quiet day around the retreat.

In the afternoon Meaghan took us for a cruise on the Mary River. The Mary River has the highest number of crocs per kilometre of any river in the NT and we saw quite a few. On a sad note Meaghan did say 4 years ago 2 blokes from Katherine dared each other to swim across the river and they both made it fine but then they decided to swim back and one of them was taken. These crocs are very aggressive and very big, you cannot afford to be complacent around them.

It was really nice spending time on the river.

On returning to our cabin we found we had a visitor. A little gecko was up on the wall keeping the bugs under control!

Tomorrow it is on to Litchfield!Read more