Bag a Barra — 15 May 2026

It's time now to head to the Top End and Bagabara with Glenn Watty Watt, thanks to Barefoot Fishing Safaris and Uniden, for the best in UHF communications, explore the extract series at Uniden.com.au. Well, as you know, we love talking about the Top End. We love the Northern Territory, and, of course, the Top End is certainly one of my, if not, it is not one of mine. It is my favourite place in Australia.

Everybody should travel to the Northern Territory Top End at some point in their life. Do it once, do it twice. Just keep going up there. We love it.

But it doesn't get any more fatigue than this. You'll often hear us talk about kale's crossing, and it is that water, that little water crossing that goes from Kakadu into Arnumland, and that's where all the crocodiles are waiting for their bearers. Well, today, there's someone on a boat up there and he's waiting for some barrer as well. Watty, g'day.

Good morning, duck. How are you? I'm going all right. So you are there at Carl's Kale's Crossing in the boat.

What is it? What it like? Yeah, that's right. We're actually a little bit further upstream right now, but we ducked down for a quick look this morning when we 1st got on the water as the sun was coming up.

It's really nice. We've got some pretty neepy tides at the moment, so the big tides aren't pushing up over the garage and bringing all those crops and mullet in, like a lot of people would see the videos of, but, um, yeah, still a absolutely spectacular place to spend a day's fishing too. So we're just poking up around all through this rock escarpment and paper bark country and trying to pull a few barra from these snags. Are you getting into them?

Yeah, we're having a bit of a quiet patch right now, but we got into them 1st thing in the morning and yeah, I guess they might have been looking for their breakfast then and now maybe we're waiting for them to come looking for their lunch. Well, you know, they go for a swim. There might be someone else looking for their lunch. That's right.

Well, we actually saw a big buffalo, he just climbed out of the water this morning, climbed up a sandbar after he'd swum across the river, so I was trying to get one of the boys largely to see if he could ride him across the river, but he didn't reckon that was a good idea. Jeez, I tell you what, he's brave, that buffalo. Fair dink. Yeah, we haven't actually seen any crocs in here today.

Of course, they're always here. So, yeah, he's a big animal, so take a big crocodile to do him too much harm, but yeah, still, makes you wonder what he thought was so important on the other side of the river. Do you remember that Tom and the whale swum into the, what was it, the, um, the river up there? Was it the Mary River?

The big whale? That was the East Alligator River. The East Alligator. The whale went in there.

And I thought, oh, holy duel, this could be a smaller sport, but they they might have looked at him and thought, geez, he's a bit big for us. Yeah, that's right. We were taking a bit to kill him, I reckon, but yeah, that was really unique, wasn't it? It was only a couple of years ago, yeah.

It's an interesting thing to happen because it's a, I mean, it's a big river, but it's quite, it's quite muddy. It's not as if it's nice clean water that he'd be able to see where he was going so he must have had the compass um playing up there at that stage. Yeah, I reckon so mate. So many people on the water this morning up there.

I mean, obviously, what are you there with a tour group? You've got some customers on board? Yeah, I just got Gordon Largie here with me for a few more days. But it hasn't, there's only 2 other boats out here.

Um, where we are this morning on the freshwater side of the East Alligator. There's perhaps a few. Oh, there's certainly less than you would expect at this time of year. It's far as travelling anglers goes.

But, yeah, um, there's still plenty of locals coming out, of course, um, for their weekend fishing and that sort of thing, so, um, just, I mean, we're lucky because we've got 2 rivers here that are both about 100 kilometres long, so everyone gets a chance to spread out. What about the crossing itself, mate? How deep is it at the moment? I mean, we're basically just out of the wet season.

Um, it's, it's uh, doable. people crossing it out, crossing over into Arnhem Land or back the other way? No, not yet. It's still closed at the moment, although it can't be far off because we were there on low tide this morning and um, there was, um, you know, there's probably only 3 or 400 mil of water over it. So, yeah, it won't be, won't be long, maybe even next week and it should be open and that's really good because it gives all the people that've been living out remote for the last few months a chance to get back into town and um, stock up on supplies and that sort of thing and and opened up Arnham Land for all our dry season tourism as well, of course.

Yeah, that's unbelievable, isn't it? So they have to spend 3 or 4 months. These have to stock up. Yeah, that's right.

You can fly across, but you can't be doing that every weekend, I suppose. Uh, and you can, you can drive if you can get to um, sort of Gove and Nullenborg, you can drive, but then you got to, you know, it's a 700 kilometre journey. So, um, yeah, it's good when the crossing's open. Yeah, absolutely, Roger.

I'll tell you what, you wouldn't want to be rationing your beers. I mean, get down to that, but you'd be flying then. You wouldn't care what it cost. Get me, fly me over to the, uh, over to the Nunamar Tavern.

There's got a little helipad there. Yeah, that's right. You be able to land there? Yeah.

Exactly, mate. You mentioned like the you know, the travelling anglers. I mean, I'm seeing reports and talking to people that there is a real fear here that this fuel crisis and whether it's a fuel crisis now or not, people are still uncertain about it. It's having an effect on people travelling to the northern territory.

My advice is still go. I mean, there's plenty of fuel out there. Okay, sure, you're going to pay a little bit more for it, but you may be able to, you know, not that we like people to do it, but you may be able to, you know, maybe, you know, maybe not go to the club for tea one night or, or, you know, or maybe free camp somewhere to get yourself up there, um, because we want to encourage people to travel to the northern territory and go and experience that and keep all those regional jobs in that part of the world going. Are you, are you hearing anything?

Like, I know you, you know, a lot of your customers are flying in, fly out, but from what I'm seeing, there's a few people worried about, you know, the numbers on road, caravaners and the like that may be a bit quieter. We really don't want that, do we? We'd have to COVID and everything else that we've been through in the last few years. Yeah that's right.

No, certainly we'd expect plenty of people to be here by now, mate, but there's definitely a lot less caravans in the parks in Kakadu, for sure, and even just noticing it down the street in Darwin as well. Um, you know, the markets are um, not really pumping as much as they would normally be by this time of year and that sort of thing. But, yeah, maybe people are just holding off a little bit. I mean, the actual petrol prices, um, almost back down to, you know, not too far above what it was before this drama started it, and of course, diesel's still up there a bit, but, um, yeah, compared to what it was even a couple of weeks ago, it's, it's dropped way back.

It's probably a dollar a litre cheaper out here in Kakadu than it was a few weeks ago. So that makes a big difference for everyone trying to run a business and also hopefully encourage a few more people to get up here and enjoy this beautiful scenery that we are looking at right now. Yeah, I know our unofficial gauge here on our show is Mother's Day to Father's Day. So it's probably still early days. And if my memory serves me right, I remember talking to people last year, it was a bit of a late start. Early on, you know, like Frank McKinlay and other people, they were telling me, Jizit, it's a bit quiet.

It was a late start, but then all of a sudden it just started flowing and kept flowing. So hopefully that might be the case. Yeah, that's right. It's every chance, I suppose.

And if it keeps sort of heading away at the way it is now at the fuel prices that should encourage people to get out and about and especially once that winter really sets in down in Victoria and those sort of places. People might say bugger and it doesn't matter how much the fuel costs I'm getting out of here. Yeah, get out of the cold. It's not the end of the world just yet.

There's no better place to head. In this time of year than there. I, I, I, I, I, I mean, it's just, it's amazing. And I mean, not only the weather, but the lifestyle and the attractions and the swimming holes and all those good things about travelling to Darwin and going out to your favourite beach and my favourite beach, Dundee, and all that stuff.

It's, and, of course, Kakidu. You've got so many things to do and see up there, and this is the time of year over the next few months, really, you want to be there. And look, we've just got to encourage people to do it. I mean, um, you know, and I mean, I know I know a lot, you know, very bad things can happen to Dallas Springs, which we just saw recently, which was just heartbreaking.

But that Alice Springs itself. It's a beautiful part of the territory as well, isn't it? I mean, like, it's it's all part of it. I mean, some of the some of the attractions there are incredible.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, the desert country through wintertime after a bit of rain, you'll never see anything as beautiful as that when you get a few wildflowers out in bloom and that sort of thing. And of course, those, um, those sort of cool, cool but sunny days, really, really nice. And yeah, I mean, Alice Springs actually a wonderful town and you saw how the town got around the family, um, during that period there a couple of weeks ago and, um, it just goes to show their... Yeah, the preconceived ideas that people have about those sort of places aren't always true.

Maybe, maybe you sort of see a noisy minority and, and the rest of everyone else is just, just there enjoying their lives and, yeah, to get back to what you're saying about how much stuff's on up here. Our biggest problem at the moment is deciding what to choose to do on the weekends. There's 2 or 3 sort of major events on every weekend up here at this time of year. So, yeah, um, you know, all the food festivals, music festivals, and then, of course, the Nunamaradeo and all that sort of stuff that starts...

Oh, I think he's gone. What, he's gone. He's just dropped out. What he has gone.

He has gone. That was our man Mulchi. He just said that. Our man, Mulch, our man, what he has dropped out.

What we'll do. We'll just, we'll just, what we'll do, a little bit of a break here, and we'll see if we can get him back up one sec. You're listening to the camping and off-road radio show. With the dark.

Thanks to our broadcast partner, Club 4 by 4 insurance, the four-wheel drive, caravan, and camper trailer insurance specialists. For a quote, call 1300, 296296. Well, it just shows how real our show is when we're talking to people in very remote areas. Watty, even the starling dropped out, but we've got him back up on the line. You there, Watty, or did you not pay the bill?

No, I think it might have been, we can blame Elon for that one, I think, mate. There's a little bit of cloud cover starting to come over here, although we have a really nice sunny day today compared to the last couple of days. We've still got a bit of cool, cool breeze from that big high that you guys have had down the bike down there. I think that's slowing these fish up at the moment as this wind picks up, but, yeah, fingers crossed, it'll drop off later on and they'll come back on the bike. I did see Gordon just got a little bite then while we're offline.

Good on you, Gordon. Good on you, mate. That's it. He might have stood in front of the starlink dish.

All right. Well, listen, we'll let you... Anyway, all right, mate. Well, listen, you enjoy. I hope you get into some barrow up there, mate.

in a good part of the world right there and not far from Carl's Crossing there, up there in Kakadu. mate. Well done. I mean, this is as real as it gets when we get you on the boat.

We love it when we do that. You're a good man, mate. You get into the fish and we'll have a yarn with you next week, eh? Unreal, mate.

No worries at all. Talk to you then. There he is. That's our man, Glenn Watty Watt.

Barefoot Fishing Safaris. If you want to go up there and experience that. And that's the thing with the Northern territory. It's not just the fishing with Watty.

It's the lifestyle, the whole thing. The culture of the place. Mindel markets, this time of year is the time of year to get up there if you can. And we love it there.

I wish I was there with him right now. It's a beautiful part of Australia. It's the real deal. That is for sure.

So, uh, but if you want to get up there and have a fish with Watty. Barefoot Fishing Safaris, you can check him out, check out the website, check out these social media platforms as well. Barefoot Fishing Safaris. Fit, go fishing with our man, Watty, and who knows?

You can even be on the boat one day when we ring him. So you can say g'day to us. Anyway, Barefoot Fishing Safaris.