A Lazy Day to Point Stuart

We didn’t need to check out of our Darwin hotel until 1100 and seeing that we only had a drive of about 150 km to Point Stuart Lodge, we took it easy and didn’’t leave Darwin until almost midday.

We followed the Arnhem Highway toward Kakadu, passing by many kilometres of mango farms. Eventually, the road reached the broad flood plain of the Mary River. Theere is nothing much of note along the way – just a lot of tropical scrub.

We did, however, find an interesting stop at Leaning Tree Lagoon. It was very photogenic with thousands of Lilly Pads on the water.

P8220159 Pano.

We turned north a little way after crossing Mary River to travel towards Point Stuart Lodge, we we staying for the night. It was about 40 km from the highway along a made road although the last ten kilometres were gravel. A road grader was working along the road so it was quite smooth and without many corrugations.

The Lodge is a bit of an oasis in the middle of nowhere. It has beautiful clear water from a nearby spring, a bar and a cafe. It’s funny how much location can affect phone reception. On our side of the central grassy area, we could only manage a couple of bars of a 3G signal. While on the other side, there were a few bars of 4G and enought to just get any messages. The Lodge generates it own power with a diesel generator and needless to say, there was no phone, internet or TV.

After a quick lunch, we drove back down the road towards the highway and then along a rather rough road to a location known as the ‘Rock Hole’ This was situated on a very large expanse of wetlands that form part of the Mary River. We had booked a two hour sightseeing cruise on a little boat and it was superb.

We saw a significant amount of wild life – mostly birds but also a few animals. We returned to the starting point around 6.00 pm and the last part of our day was a very dusty drive back to the Lodge for dinner.