Hot & Sticky Darwin

12-14 July 2023

With a day and half before flying east to Bamurru Plains, I took a stroll around the area I’m staying in and found my way to the harbour’s edge. The tide was out, leaving the roadway very high above the waterline. Tides here are significant: for example, when we leave Darwin on the MV Reef Prince on Monday (17 July), the previous low tide at 11:35pm Sunday evening will be 1.4 meters, while the high tide at 6:28am will be 6.4 meters.

It was nice to have a gentle start to the next few weeks, and to look around this local area. It also gave me time to re-organise my luggage in the evening, and take my “big” bag & pull-along bag down to Reception to be stored until Sunday.

My private flight to Bamurru Plains left at 1:30pm, and I was at the General Aviation Terminal at Darwin Airport at around 12:30. Their strict luggage requirements are one soft sided bag totalling no more than 15kg. Even with camera gear, laptop, small binocs and cables spread across a small bag & my trusty backpack, I was just below that, so all was well.

The person checking me in confirmed that the aircraft is a Cessna 210, and my pilot would be Jethro. And, of course I just had to say: “as in Tull”. The response was “Huh? He likes to be called Jet”, and my response to that was: “it’s an age thing.” Sigh …

[For those that don’t know, Jethro Tull was a UK rock band from the late 60s].

Once everything was loaded, I climbed into the seat behind Jet, and we trundled out to the runway, windows open to allow hot air to circulate. Then as part of his final check, the windows were closed and we were on our way, heading north then east, and climbing to 3,500 ft.

Being middle of the day and in a hot climate, I knew it would be bumpy – and it lived up to expectations. We bounced across the coast before heading inland towards the airstrip at Swim Creek. A flyover to check that the runway was clear of animals, was followed by a very nice landing onto the dirt airstrip.