48 hours in darwin

I don’t know if you’re going to need more than 48 hours in Darwin, I’ve been to Darwin about 5 times and haven’t spent more than 48 hours there, it seems to be long enough.

This time around we were doing a couple of things - photography location scouting for Belinda and fishing for me.

First, let’s talk about food.

There’s no shortage of good places to eat in Darwin, I don’t do reviews of places I eat at because I’m not a psychopath, so it’s just a list.

Hanuman

Little Miss Korea

Rays Cafe

Darwin Sailing Club

Char

Eva’s cafe

We stayed on the waterfront this time at the Adina Hotel - it has the tidal pool out the front which is a bit like swimming in a warm swamp but in a good way.

The great barramundi fishing expedition was the first excursion of the trip. Now I’ve been fishing in the NT quite a bit, but it was Belinda’s first time so I was definitely keen for her to hook a barra and see what all the fuss is about.

Heading out to Corroboree Billabong in the morning darkness we made the obligatory stop at the corroboree park tavern for coffee and a bacon and egg roll, so far Belinda is not feeling it.

Corroboree Billabong is off the Arnhem Hwy on the upper reaches of the Mary River system, it’s a stunning pristine wetland full of wildlife, including a ton of crocodiles. Belinda is starting to feel it now.

Just after Sun up we hooked into the first barra, mine of course. a healthy 70 ish cm silver bullet, nice to get the first one in the net. About half an hour later Belinda snagged one - a little tug of war ensued and it glided in to the net, maybe a little bigger than mine too. Photo’s all-round then back to it.

A slight issue began to appear overhead in the form of 2 menacing monsoonal storms - seemingly on a collision course with us in the middle, we decided to have lunch and see if it was going to pass us by. Nope

A decision was made by Belinda to hightail it back to the boat ramp before her good mood disappeared, just like my one metre barra dream.

Chasing barra in the Northern Territory is one of those fishing holy grails, 100% addictive and even if you don’t get a fish it’s just an amazing place to be.

On to the next day.

We organised a trip out to Litchfield National Park with Cyaround tours - a small group tour business run out of a custom Toyota troopy. Litchfield is about an hour out of Darwin heading towards Katherine. The plan was to get out there early so a 5am pick up was agreed on - yikes.

We’re not tour group people, we prefer to go our own way and not be on a schedule, but as it turned out, the day we had with Cyaround was great. We hit all the waterholes,waterfalls and quite a few spots that aren’t on the usual tourist trail and had all of them mostly to ourselves.

Belinda was happy to be able to find a few good places to come back to for photoshoots, it’s an amazing landscape that you could spend years photographing and not even touch the surface. We had a final dip at Mataranka springs before heading straight to the airport for our 5pm flight.

One thing I didn’t mention - it was fucking Hot. ( even the locals were like - fuck this shit ).

Thanks Darwin.