Maningrida to Darwin

Barges to refuel from have been a single experience for us previously . They are either permanently moored or move from major cities to remote areas carrying fuel plus other goods. Our only time was the Lockhart River and that barge was only 20 + meters, so when we booked fuel to be picked at Maningrida at 0600 on 24 May through Perkins Shipping, little did we expect that it would so big. A phone call just after 0200 to let us know that they were running a little early,like how early !!!! By 0400 we had taken on our 600litres and made a decision to push on to Valentia Island a 110 nm trip. Reef slept through the whole saga and awoke just on dawn.
Liverpool River/Maningrida wasn’t to bad a place to wait, as we had the dingy firmly tied on. Our plans were to push on as soon as we had refueled and put some distance behind us, then we could tow it from islands to islands until the long haul to Darwin,when back onto the duck board. Our time in the river while waiting gave Taz a chance to land his first fish, a nice size cat fish. While our lack of knowledge of what to eat and not, we decided to return it to the water after taking photos.
FA , who were enjoying their time fishing north of us, joined us at Valentia Island. Reef was elated to see again his new best friend Sandy. Our attempt at fishing that evening, dragging our depleted supply of lures behind the dingy saw nil, while FA landed a fish that we all were not quiet sure what it was.
Today we are on the way to Port Essington which has a colonial history, many little bays to explore plus a resort, which we hope that they may give us permission to visit.
3 Days later……….. The resort had closed, pearl farming was in some of the bays, the little shop had closed at Black Point, therefore NO ice creams, but Pete the ranger in charge came to the rescue and Reef enjoyed a Paddle Pop. He also gave us much valuable information about the area and suggested a couple of walks to do;FA were due in the next day so some much needed leg stretching was planned. That evening, taking heed of the tidal information given to us,[ as spring tides were due in a few days, ]we were very comfortable that we had plenty of water under us. What a shock at 2100 to hear a grinding noise, investigations led us to site a bommie, uncharted of course about 1 to 1.5 meters square responsible for the sound. Ian in the dingy pushing and lots of what if’s and what about, we finally moved away from it with help from the tide and lots of chain in the dingy One hour later we had re set the anchor in deeper water and felt that we got out of what could have been an interesting situation very well. .
The next day was one of reflection and a walk around the “swamp” behind the rangers hut. Our warm up stretch/walk of only 1.5 km was helpful as we walked Victoria Settlement a 3.7km early the following day. This area was established in 1838 by the British as the fear of Dutch and French expansion into the southern East Indies and a presence was needed. They battled for 11 years and the remains of their stone buildings from a hospital, blacksmith forge, quartermasters store, kiln etc are still remarkably preserved. Reef was great all the time and enjoyed playing with a five year old boy we met on the walk.
Today we are anchored in Darwin.A very early start this morning a near full moon saw the anchor [which was covered in mud up to the shaft] up finally. With the tides pushing us along at 21kts at one stage, our passage was good with only a few hours of two meter seas beam on. Our plans are tomorrow to be locked in to Cullen Bay Marina, this process involves making a booking with the lock master and well next time I will have all the ins and outs of going through a lock.