LIFE SA VERS

OLD mate and I were coming back from a trip 50km downriver and had just crossed the rock bar some 2km downstream from the crossing when we noted beer cans and an esky bobbing in the current We scooped most of them out with a landing net – free beer!

There was more stuff floating downstream, before it hit us – someone had turned a boat over I twisted the throttle, sped up and saw a large local sitting on a wheel below the crossing, the only part exposed from his 4WD. A woman cried out from a tree near us She was sitting on the leaning trunk of a paperbark tree, while a small croc was eyeing her off below I steadied the boat under the trunk and old mate lifted her into the boat She immediately claimed the beer cans as her own bugga!

We picked up two men from the muddy bank, before we turned our attention to the bloke on the tyre, but someone had pushed a tinnie into the river and was helping him into it Nothing to do but take photos. Turned out that he had picked up a brand new Nissan Patrol in Darwin that day, one of those early box-like models that were called ‘bog machines’.

On a recent visit, there were three vehicles in the river and another two that hbeen pulled out with a loader on the bank of the Arnhem Land side. One year, a dump truck with two trailers went over the side The driver thought he was okay with the heavy truck and trailers, but the river was high, unkind and punished him for his ignorance and lack of respect

Cahills isn’t difficult to cross when the tide is right.

(Pic©Tourism NT/ James Fisher)