THURSDAY 20 JULY     THEDA STATION

Another hot day.

John made some radphone calls in relation to his oldest brother, C, who at 80 is not well. There is concern in the family about him.

John then went fishing some more. I walked down the side of the river for some way, and back.

I noticed a grey “rock” in the pool by camp, where there hadn’t been one before, and spotted a croc – just eyes and nose – watching the camp. This was different behaviour to that of the little pale brown freshie we saw a couple of times yesterday, floating around over the other side, pretending to be a piece of dead pandanus, while it checked us out. It had also done its check, in the same way, this morning. It rather gives itself away, by floating upstream!

The grey watcher sank when he heard John coming back up the river bank, then resurfaced, and John saw him. I fetched my camera, but he went under again and came back up, across the other side, floating around for a while before swimming slowly away, upstream. He was about 3 metres long. I was unsure whether he was a very large freshie or a small saltie. He seemed quite bold, for a freshie, but we had been told there was a big one in the pool.

The question was whether he would come back at night for a closer look!

We had a quiet afternoon, in the heat. We played chess and yahtzee to while away the time.

In the late afternoon, John fished some more.

Tea was pasta with a tub of capsicum and olive sauce – quite nice.

We made sure we kept a fair sized fire going through the night, getting up a couple of times to put more wood on it. When I was camping on a beach on Melville Island, with some Tiwi people, a decade ago, they kept a large fire burning between their camp and the water, as a croc deterrent.

Occasionally, we heard splashing noises from the pool. The night was cold again.