I reluctantly share this tale with you all to prove a point.  Persistence pays off. 

We were living in Darwin at the time and my eldest son Luke and I had planned a trip out to Kakadu for the weekend to fish the South and East Alligator Rivers .  Got the gear together on the Friday night and packed the old boat and I bounced out of bed on Saturday morning ready for the big adventure.  Fishing in the NT is always an adventure because of the distances between fishing holes and the aggressive wildlife (including humans). 

Luke pulled up a bit sick and as a result we had to head in to Darwin and look for a chemist to get some antibiotics.  This delayed our departure by a good hour and decreased my patience level.  After the very slow moving sloth behind the Chemist counter got it in a pile, we finally hit the road feeling a bit anxious to get there and get the boat wet.

At this point it is probably im port ant to mention that my servicing schedule for the boat and trailer is less than ideal – actually it really leaves something to be desired – actually it is almost non existent (bugger).  We were about an hour in to the trip and about 20kms from Humpty Doo when the fourbie swerved a bit to the right and lost a bit of power.  A quick check of the rear vision mirror saw the boat on a fair lean (understatement) and a mass of sparks coming from the right hand side.  I glanced to my right and got a bird’s eye view of my trailer tyre heading for South alligator Caravan park without us (bugger – stupid servicing schedule). 

I wrestled the truck and trailer to a stop (from 120 km/hr) and ‘dragged’ the trailer off the bitumen to the side of the road.  No prizes for guessing the problem – wheel bearing had seized and exploded – wheel had come loose and the trailer axel was about three inches shorter on the RHS.   Nice big gouge in the road too. Doh.. what where we going to do now?  Middle of bloody nowhere with a broken trailer.  Fortunately the boat was unharmed and the beer was still cold (Gotta keep the fluids up in the NT).  We finally decided to drop the trailer and boat on the side of the road and head back to Humpty Doo to see if we could enlist some help.

After a short drive through the town (impossible to have a big drive around as it is not that big a place) we found a tyre workshop, explained our plight and managed to source a flatbed truck (at a hefty price) to come and recover the boat and trailer back to the workshop.  Still had my sense of humour in tact – just.  Long story short, when the flatbed got there it didn’t have the power to pull up the trailer with boat attached, so we had to drop the boat off the trailer and drag it further away from the road, get as much fishing gear out of it as we could (to stop thieving bastards stealing it) and winch up the trailer separately.  Sense of humour fading.

Righto – back at the workshop and the owner has a look (after a reasonable wait – you would have thought we were in a doctors reception rather than waiting to go fishin’) and informs me that we would have to go back to Darwin to pick up the parts (I momentarily lost it but recovered quickly once I worked out that it was futile to rant and rave at this bloke who was actually trying to help).  In the car we got, with a list of parts and headed off to Darwin at warp speed (120km / hr – that’s as fast as the Hilux will go).  Got the axel and hubs etc and then back to Humpty Doo. 

I’ll give you the abridged version here – Trailer fixed, wrong hubs (their fault), needed new rims which I sourced from a local wrecker, then axle wasn’t long enough for those rims so the tyres rubbed, spaced the wheels out with big washer and away we went.  Got back to the boat and started to winch it on the trailer, winch cable snapped (lost it for a fair while on the side of the road and used the majority of known swear words and kicked nearly everything I could get to).  Back to Humpty Doo and bought new cable – back to boat and fitted cable and winched boat on. 

I was smiling now until I heard the hisssss.  It was not a snake but the tyres slowly leaking.  We drove very slowly back to the F&^%n workshop and nicely??? asked the owner t fit the tyres properly.  Mid afternoon we were again on our way and heading for the South Alligator.  By the time we got there and set up camp (yea, we were staying in tents) it was way too late to go fishing and I was not at all confident that we would have got back alive if we had tried.

PART TWO

Day one of our “Excellent Fishing Adventure” had not quite panned out as expected.  We had made it to the South Alligator Caravan Park and decided to stop there and make camp for the nigh.  Tent went up without a hitch (at least something was going our way), but when it came time to cook dinner the light was fading fast.  For those of you that have ventured to the Top End and gone camping you will know what I am about to describe.  I estimate that every insect in the NT had decided to come and see what we were having fro dinner.  I have never been swarmed by so many flying critters.  I swore through the cooking and then we were forced to sit in the front seat of the Hilux to eat.  Not happy Jan.  A couple more frosty ales and I was ready to hit the sack.

Next morning we were up with the birds.  Rested and ready to tackle the rivers we had a quick cereal and coffee and belted off down the road.  The night before Luke and I had discussed fishing tactics for the day and we had decided to attack the East Alligator River – upstream.  The wet season had not long finished and the Barra should still be pretty active.  We had not fished upstream from Cahill’s Crossing before and were pretty keen. 

About 10 minutes before Jabiru is the East Alligator turn off but we were getting a bit low on fuel.  I didn’t think to fill up before we left and didn’t have enough to get to Cahill’s and back.  Luke pointed out in the NT Fishfinder mag that there was bait and fuel at the Corner store at Cahill’s – so we opted not to go to Jabiru, and to continue on.   

Halfway there we encountered a flood across the road.  Unsure about how deep it was, and weary of snapping handbags, we got out of the car and surveyed the situation.  There was a mini van parked on the side of the road and after a brief discussion with the occupant we were informed that several cars had passed through this morning and the water was less than a metre deep.  We had a 4WD and a boat – so what could go wrong???  Can you see what is coming here?

Surprise – we got through the water trap without a hiccup, through the next one as well and arrived at the Border Store with only the smell of an oily rag in the fuel tank.  How lucky were we that we made it?  I pulled up to the bowsers full of confidence but they were locked.  I went for a chat with the lady at the counter who informed me “No we don’t have any fuel – the trucks can’t get through until the water recedes to 1 to 2 foot.  It’ll be another few weeks”.  I was shattered and completely out of ideas.  It had taken us so much to just get there and now this.  I stuck out my hand and said to her “G’day – My name is Shep and I’m your new neighbour until I can get some fuel.”

Fortunately her husband was heading in to Jabiru that day, so we gave him some Jerrys, a 50 and launched the boat.  We trolled and flicked lures all day with next to no strikes and no fish when late in the day Luke’s rod when off.  It was peeling line off at a great rate and I headed the boat out to the middle of the river and cut the engine.  The first of many jumps showed us that he was on to a sizeable Barra.  He fought the fish for over twenty minutes, and waited patiently when the fish took him in to the weeds.  Eventually the fish swam back out and dragged his braid back out with it.  We got it to the boat and had a big high five session once we had netted it.

All that time and effort paid off with Luke’s first metre plus Barra.  It measured in at 115cm – a few quick pics and back she went to fight another day.  Fortunately we got our fuel and managed to get back to the park that night without further incident.  We fished the South Alligator on the following day, but I’ll keep that story for next time.  Persistence really does pay off. Oh and a regular maintenance schedule is a really really good idea.

PS. Did I mention that Luke had left his antibiotics out of the tent when we left that morning and the crows had been attracted by the silver paper and eaten $60 worth of his drugs?  Excellent…..

Happy fishin’

Shep