Bag a Barra — 15 May 2020

It's time to head to the Top End and Baga Barra. With Glenn Watty Watts, thanks to Shimano. Remember to buy local and fish local. visit shimanofish.com.au. You've always got a rod in your hand, haven't you, Watty? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, the lioness is always asking me why I'm always playing with me tackle, but I don't know whether that's the same thing or not. Yeah, fair enough, and with that, we'll just move right along. How are you going, mate? Now, look, you're in one of the, you're in one of the best places in Australia.

In fact, I said to someone the other day, I think the northern territory is the best place on the planet at the moment. Yeah, the pubs are opening back up, so we're all good to go up here. Yeah, exactly right. The pubs are open and you are into it up there, which is fantastic.

And mate, the weekends are back. You can get out and you can travel around and do a bit of fishing just before we get into the spot you're going to tell us about. Thank you for coming on the shed, the duck shed podcast the other week on the Friday night show, mate, you proved pretty popular. Oh, right, eh.

It's a bit of a worry. People mustn't have much to do at the moment, I suppose, but yeah, we had a good game, mate. It was as close to being, you know, in a bar together as we can be at the moment, so it was good. I reckon.

How many beers you reckon we drank between us on that little hour and 15 minutes that you were on. I reckon we would have been through almost 20 keens. I had to go to the fridge a couple times and I said to Louise, oh, could you see the bit where I went for a leak too? and she reckoned she could pick it. but anyway.

I never saw that bit either, but I wasn't really watching. but anyway. But no, it was good, mate. thanks to that.

And mate, I'll tell you, it was a real insight too for people that were watching and people who have since seen listened to it on podcasts of life in the Top End and it was good and thanks for doing that, mate. And the thing that I think stood out to everyone was the fact that it was, we had that rule blast of, you know, the cold here at that particular time and I'm sitting behind the bar with the beanie on, the vest, the flano, you're kicking back with a singleton. The daylight in the background and that just goes to show how big this country is when, yeah, someone can be sitting there rugged up and freezing and you're just kicking back drinking, you know, cans and the sun hadn't quite gone down up there. It was really good.

I think that really stood out for people. Mate, where we going? We were trying to give people as many spots up in the Top End as we can to go and grab that barrel. I think it's on everyone's bucket list to, especially people who go fishing to get up there and do some fair ink and barramundi fishing.

Mate, you've been to all the spots, mate. Where are we off to this week? Yeah, so one of the really popular ones, particularly with the travelling grain OMADs and just general tourism market, is the Douglas Daily Tourist region. It's sort of a, it's in the freshwater section of the Daly River, where the Douglas Meaver, uh, river joins up with it.

And um, the, it's sort, sort of surrounded by this whole area you can explore with hot springs and billabongs and and little rivers and other really cool sort of stuff. Pretty well, like, um, it's still fairly wild, like, there's not a heap of infrastructure around there and, and you, you sort of do feel like you're out in the proper territory out in the bush, when you go for a camp or go for a look down there for the weekend. It's a great little spot. Oh, mate, sounds fantastic.

And uh, mate, I'm too, so plenty of camping options there, and I think you mentioned earlier, a Caribbean park there as well. Yeah, that's right. So, uh, we call it a corn patch, um, but it's, it's actually called the Douglas Daily Tourist Park. I think I used to work on stations down around that area.

So, we get back down there a bit and catch up with a few of the lads, go for a hunting, a fish, and, and yeah, there's a hot springs right near the caravan park slash pub, which is a beautiful spot to go, and you can camp there as well as, um, yeah, have a, have a swim in safety and some nice warm water, um, during the dry season when it can be a bit chilly. Yeah, no, exactly. How good is that? It sounds fantastic. And all these places now. I mean, they've been empty, really.

I mean, and obviously a lot of people listening to us now who had Northern territory trips planned to be absolutely spewing because I'm one of them because I would have been there right now. In fact, it would have been almost coming towards the end of our trip in the in the Top End. I think we're up there for 5 or 6 weeks doing shows. I'm tripping that'll be back on again at some point.

It'd be great to get up there this year. We'll just see what happens. I can self-isolate for 14 days. Won't worry about that, Watty.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I mean, if you if you're coming up for 5 weeks, it's sort of worth the pain. But yeah, it's a really popular one for locals and tourists alike, you know, it's, it's amazing what's happening up here at the moment. This is the 1st dry season ever, that, um, you know, Darwin locals, we sort of haven't had to, not so much put up with, but we haven't had to, um, encounter the tourist market, on our weekend camping trips and fishing trips.

So, yeah, it's an amazing sort of feeling of going out there and seeing all blokes and other locals rather than sort of people you don't know. Yeah, it's good for yourself. Yeah, that's right. It's a, it's an interesting time.

So, I mean, we'll, the industry and the economy, certainly, will welcome the tourism industry back, but, but it is nice to have a little bit of territory to ourselves every now and then. Yeah, no, I'm sure it is mate. So, mate, so you can catch them there and kick back and enjoy yourself, mate, just on the pubs. Are there restrictions on numbers or is it just get in there and do your best?

No, there are. There's some pretty tight restrictions. They're very conscious of sort of not messing up the hard work that we've all sort of done building up to this point. So there's um capacity restrictions as well as um a time limit of 2 hours and you must have a meal to consume alcohol as well. So, there's some good little guidelines in there, and fingers crossed, everyone sort of abides by those, and um, and sort of, it can go on and, and relax more and more as we sort of progress to our new normal as they're all coining it.

Yeah, mate, I know about the new normal. Yeah, I know, the new normal. They come up with a catch rate. Wait, 2 hours.

Two hours? I mean, so what do you do? go out. What do you do?

Go outside and just walk in walking backwards so they think you're going. You come back and do another 2 hours. And there's a bit of a gray area with a tucker, too. I think they said that you can order one bowl of chips and that covers your meal and then off you go.

So, you know, normally we'll go in there and we get, get 2 beers straight up anyway, because the 1st one's usually gone by time the change is handed back to you, so then you're right to go. Yeah, that's what happens in the northern territory. Yeah, exactly. Like, you've got a mate of mine who does that when he, you're in a shout with him, he'll get 3 V's, 2 for him, and one for you, and he drinks one at the bar.

Unbelievable. Anyone won't name it. I won't name him, but he certainly can do it. He might, he'd have 20 and wouldn't even know he had won.

He's just, what they call beer fit, Watty. All right, mate, we'll leave you in the Top End, you enjoy, and mate, I hope you're having a great weekend. And again, thanks for coming on our Friday night show. The other week, it was pretty good, and if anyone wants to have a look at that, they can just go to our YouTube channel, look for the duck off-road Australia on YouTube, and you'll see Watty and I. Although, you know, 4 or 5000 K's apart, whatever it is, probably not that many, it wouldn't even be that.

I'm thinking of Perth. I'm thinking up, there have any case for me to me to year, what, 3000, I guess, 2.5, somewhere? Yeah, from sort of Western Victoria. We're looking at about 40 hours of driving time.

So you'd probably be a bit less, but you've got to go a different way, of course. As the crow flies, probably 3000 I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, mate, anyway, people want to see what 2 blokes get up to while they're 3000 kilometres apart, count to that, check it out, the duck, the YouTube channel, the duck off-road Australia, and you can have a look at the video of me and Watty having a Friday night shed session, which was pretty good.

Mate, we'll leave you there and we'll talk to you next week, eh? Good on you, mate. Have a good weekend. Enjoy it.

Enjoy your break and stay safe. Good on you. You too, mate. You enjoy up there and enjoy those pubs being open too.

All be for 2 hours. No, buddy, you'll do a bit of a pump crawl anyway. So you did 2 hours in 10 pubs. You get it done.

Don't worry about him. You're one of the greats up there, Watty, and mate, and what about the fishing spots he gives us each week?