Took off to Wagait Beach (pronounced wogit) for the Picnic Day long weekend in Northern Territory. It’s not far from Darwin, on the Cox Peninsular, across the Port Darwin harbour from Darwin. We left Friday afternoon and headed for Mandorah Beach Hotel. What a great pub, overlooking the harbour with Darwin City in the distance, all outdoors and right on the beach. Very friendly owners too. Great place. We stayed there for some food and a few drinks and a chat to Nick behind the bar getting ideas where we can camp and go fishing. Camped up Friday night right on the beach, 5 minutes from the pub.

Saturday, Sharni went to Darwin by ferry to get her shopping fix whilst Joe went fishing and explored the area looking for a spot to camp and fish Saturday night. There’s plenty of tracks heading west from Wagait. There’s a WW2 plane wreck (B24-J Liberator) that can be viewed with some good quality information plaques explaining the crash and some of the components of the plane. Access is via a well signposted 4WD track. We camped on the beach near a creek, I think it was called Two Fella Creek. Tried mud crabbing – what a blowout. Chucked in the crab pots, only to return to find them inaccessible due to the high tide. What an amateur. Already feeling stupid, I thought I’d feel even more stupid if I was fatally attacked by a crocodile trying to retrieve them. So a whole afternoon / evening of mud crabbing gone. Pulled them out in the morning low tide but no crabs. Some chaps in tinnies running up and down the creek did manage to land a few muddies. Went fishing, caught a small bream, chucked it back. Sharni cooked up a camp oven beef roast. We got super expensive low fat heart smart beef. Cooked it medium rare intentionally to make sure it stayed tender. Well that didn’t work at all! Was tough as a dog. Good flavour, but very chewy. Was better the next day, a bit less chewy.

This beach is inundated with hermit crabs. They come out at night. Leaf litter is constantly rustling as these critters roam around. In the morning the sand is covered in their tracks. Pretty small so don’t think they’d make good tucker. I need to find some muddies!