WEDNESDAY 10 JULY 2019
We had a bit of a sleep in this morning and then Larry
cooked up one of his extra fluffy omelettes for us. We decided to have a fairly cruisy day so
headed into Chinatown and had a wander through the shops. We popped into Willie Creek pearls to see if
the lady Kate knows was working but she wasn’t there and then headed next door
to Cygnet bay pearls. Unlike a lot of
the pearl shops, you can buy a pearl on its own at Cygnet Bay and Jenny used
all of her recently acquired knowledge of pearls to find an A1 (highest quality
lustre) pearl of a reasonable size and shape
within Larry’s price range. Jenny
then chose (and paid for) the white gold clasp and necklace to go with it. We left it there for the jeweller to set and
continued on our wanderings.
Larry happened across a sports massage place and booked a
1pm massage for his shoulder which has been playing up with all the driving on
rough roads. We popped across the road
to the Green Mango Cafe for an early lunch (Kate: pancakes, Jenny: smashed avo and poached eggs
and Larry: chicken and avo foccacia) and yummy smoothies/iced crushes before
Larry headed off to his pummelling and Kate and Jenny checked out the visitors
centre and then drove down to look at what Town Beach looks like in the
daylight (Kate had only seen it in the dark on her first night when we visited
the Town Beach night markets). It is
very pretty with green grass and boab trees and azure blue waters and we
wandered out along the old jetty and took in the views until it was time to go
and pick up Larry from his massage appointment.
Jenny drove us out to the Malcolm Douglas crocodile park and
we were just there for opening time at 2pm.
They have a LOT of crocodiles in the park, both in large lakes and in
separate pens as the old males are very territorial and have to have their own
space. As it is ‘winter’ they are all
very sleepy and they were all lying still in the sun, many with their mouths
open (to regulate their temperatures).
Lots of the big males were lying right up against the edges of their
pens so that only a somewhat dodgy looking cyclone fence separated you from
hundreds of kilo of death. The
unnerving part was although they looked slow and sleepy the eyes were always
keeping an eye on you and looking for any chance to take the hand off anyone
foolhardy enough to poke their appendages through the fence.
Soon it was 3 o’clock and ‘feeding time’ so we headed back
to the main lake for a safety briefing (!) and then the keepers handed round
some tiddlers with their snouts taped shut for all the kiddies to have a hold
of. Kate and Jenny were brave and had a
hold but Larry pretended he was totally occupied in being a photographer and
getting out the right lens and so missed out.
We stood with the big holiday crowd and watched the big salties all
climb out of the water and head over to the feeding station. Kate was unimpressed to note that the alpha
males get fed first, then the males then the females last. I had to remind her that crocodiles are not
quite as evolved as us!
We followed the keepers on to the alligator lake and then
the jumping crocodile lake to see them also get fed and then decided we had had
enough of the jostling crowds trying to see through the fences and headed back
to the main building for an ice cream instead.
As Kate said, once you’ve seen half a dozen crocodiles eat a fish you
kind of get how they do it.
Headed back to home base and stopped on the way to check out
the Japanese cemetery. We had been
planning to go at sunset but Jenny knew that once we got back to the van,
inertia would set in, so it was late afternoon instead. Back at the van, Larry cooked up sausages and
Kate made macaroni cheese and a simple dinner was had followed by trying to get
the telly to work. It kind of does as
long as we all sit incredibly still. And
so to bed.
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