Mary River Cruise

Another cruise on the Mary River but this one had its own special flavour. In this section of the river, I only saw freshwater crocodiles and the special bird was a white goshawk - apparently the only white bird of prey.

As the sun sank over the river, our boat came to a big sandbar in the middle of the river. The sandbank was our restaurant for the night. The campfire was started and we had heated-up stew and the ubiquitous damper with wine. There was a fence enclosing our restaurant and a survey of the surrounding water with a torch made the reason for the fence quite obvious - lots of pairs of red eyes all around us! Crocs looking at us!

After dinner we were in for a treat when our captain pulled out his mouth organ. He has more than a touch of the Irish in him so he sang "Moreton Bay", one of my favourite old Oz Irish-inspired folk songs. There was more singing including some songs from a young Finnish woman in her language and then rousing orations: "Man from Ironbark", "The Man from Snowy River" and of course, "Clancy of the Overflow".

As we cruised back along the river, we watched for more red eyes. Then we dodged water sprinklers trying to get back to our cabins in the dark.