Before leaving Jabiru, we bought a few drinks and some soy milk from the Foodland store. (There wasn’t much more to the town than a police station, a service station, and the supermarket.) Not far into our journey to Mary River Wilderness Retreat, we saw a turnoff to a ‘viewing platform’ which turned out to be Mamukala bird hide, a great place for observing the many bird species that inhabit this wetland. We had previously learned that 1/3 of Australia’s bird species live in Kakadu! After reading the information board and identifying a few birds, we continued on our way.

We were all a little disappointed with the location, as there really wasn’t much to do in the area. It was really way too hot to do the walks around the property, and so we ended up sitting around the small swimming pool, taking an occasional dip to keep Nola company. The 100mb data allowance went a long way, allowing me to catch up on a couple of days of my blog. (Thankfully, I had already uploaded the photos.) 

To supplement our noodles and salad, we bought some food from the restaurant. Poor Gretl dropped the tartare sauce on the outside deck, splashing some of it on the glass door! The staff were busy serving customers, and so we grabbed some paper serviettes and did our best to clean it up. We ate our dinner in the camp kitchen where we were joined by a young woman who engaged Nola in a delightful discussion about our holiday. Nola chatted away about the crocodiles she had seen on the boat cruise, what they ate, etc. The woman was then joined by her husband, mother and 3-year-old daughter (who became an instant friend for Nola). 

Dinner over and dishes done, we headed back to our cabin. Nola hadn’t slept all day, and so she and Gretl headed off to bed. Having no television, we were pleased to find that we could connect to the faint wifi signal. (We had no phone coverage, and so the wifi connection gave us access to the news, etc.) We turned the lights off at about 10:30pm.