Cahill's Crossing

Cahill's Crossing, along East Alligator River, is the road which links the Kakadu National Park to Arnhem Land (Aboriginal Territory), although the road gets flooded every day when the tide is high.

Some brave souls attempting to cross at high tide.

Why is it called Alligator River? That is a good question, since there are no alligators here. The first explorers here thought that the crocodiles were alligators.  By the time anyone realised they were crocodiles, all the rivers had been named and mapped and apparently it would be too much trouble to rename everything. Hence, the East Alligator, South Alligator and West Alligator Rivers have no alligators in them. They do have lots of salt water and river water crocodiles though.

Not my picture - I was never so lucky to see a crocodile in such good view here

The river here is full of fish, making it a popular fishing spot. Since the water is also croc-infested, it makes it a particularly dangerous fishing spot. In recent years, many people have been killed here.  You would think that this would make people nervous to walk into the waters to fish, but locals especially are quite complacent about the dangers.

Crocodile safety signs are up everywhere in NT

And I mean, everywhere

We went there a few times, and unfortunately did not spot too many crocs. Which I suppose is why people get complacent.  The Aboriginals have a saying that for every croc you see, there are seven more that you don't see.

No crocodiles

Still no crocodiles

Crocodiles ... no

Wait is that a ... no

So you end up playing the "Is that a log or a crocodile" game a lot.  They were all logs...

Log or crocodile

I think it's a crocodile

It IS a crocodile

And another crocodile

So, after visiting here a bunch of times back in 2012, and again this year ... I think I was lucky enough to see 2 crocodiles. From a distance.

Jumping fishy things

One thing I did see lots off at Cahill's were these little mudskippers, which are amphibious fish. They use their fins to walk (aka jump) on land.  It's actually kind of cute to see this little fishies jumping around on the mud.

I seem to have bad luck when it comes to spotting crocodiles.

In case you are wondering, the car from the first picture did make it across the river. But some people are not so lucky...

A pic from NT News

I certainly wouldn't want to be in that predicament with all those crocs swimming about.