A boat trip on the Mary River today took us up close to the saltwater crocodiles. This is generally quite difficult and we didn’t manage it yesterday. These “guys” are really big, and nowadays there are so many of them again that our guide told us they may soon need to be culled. Heiko, the biologist, asked himself why animals need to be hunted when the population naturally levels off with its food supply. But this is not what the people here want to hear.
During the boat trip we also spotted eagles, kingfishers and lots more. From the Mary River we went on to Darwin Airport, where we said good-bye to Michael and Alex.
There now followed a four hour flight to Sydney and a 14.5 hour flight to Dubai where we landed with a one hour delay, due to an electronic fault in the A380. The A380 needed to be completely switched off (luckily on the ground) and the entire system re-booted. It was just like when our IT department reboots our company computers. We sat in complete darkness for 10 minutes and hoped that the plane would be alright again after the re-boot. Don’t worry – it worked!
