Lake Argyle to Darwin

Spider City | Barquing

Lake Argyle, depending on whom you ask, holds twelve to eighteen times the amount of water as Sydney Harbour – a unit of measurement frequently used in this part of the world. It is the largest body of fresh water in the continent and required to the largest non-nuclear explosion in Australia to come into existence, flattening a mountain and producing a deviously engineered dam.
The lake is home to some 25,000 freshwater crocodiles and, of course, we go for a swim in it anyway.
Freshwater crocodiles, it should be understood, are nothing like as dangerous as their salt-water cousins, being considerably smaller and equipped with smaller jaws and gullets. One might nip you if you kicked it, but generally they keep themselves pretty much to themselves.
Having said all of that, taking a dip in crocodile infested waters, freshwater or not, is still a little intimidating, and the first ones off the boat and into the water are not of our tour group, but a mother with her six year old daughter. Whether or not this proved to us that the water was safe for the rest of us, or whether or not we thought that the kid would be more likely to be a target for the toothy reptiles is beside the point, either way, we all follow their example and take the plunge.

It is Judith’s birthday, and come the evening, Jez pulls out all the stops by baking a birthday cake in the embers of the barbecue. Party hats are produced – I remain unsure if they are included amongst the standard tour equipment or not – and a rather unsteady rendition of Happy Birthday is sung in three separate languages. To cap everything off, we witness a rather extraordinary shooting star, leisurely in pace and accompanied by a burning red tail.
It is our final night on the trip, and thankfully the temperature is warmer than the previous night. I pick a spot under a huge boab tree and snuggle up in the swag for a blissful, uninterrupted nights sleep.

The following morning, Jez and Ben wave us off from Kununurra airport, the final leg of our trip to Darwin is by air, a thirty-seater plane departing from a tiny little airport.
Size aside, Kununurra airport is very professional. It has two gates (one for departures and one for arrivals) and – as far as I could see – only two members of staff. Where they found these two guys, I have no idea, but they seemed to perform every single task themselves. They checked our luggage in, frowning as the scales tipped perilously over the weight limit ("They’ve all got international flights tomorrow," Jez said automatically, knowing that the extra bother would be too much for them), they also slipped on hi-viz vests and drove the luggage to the waiting plane. They manned the bar at the airport and acted as security. I was almost disappointed to see that they were not flying the plane as well.