Photo courtesy of Sam Sweeney

almost everywhere i went swimming on larrakia, kungarakan and miriwoong country. 

there’s freshies in the water, but it’s the stray salty you’ve really gotta watch out for. look at me: two weeks in the top end and all i got was this casual adoption of cutesy croc shorthand. kidding, i got a lot; this place is magical, this place is blinkers-off and bonkers and bound up in outback beauty and my dad’s stories. up north, i swam more often than i thought i would: at first, only in the safety—relative— of chlorinated, contained water; eventually, in the 651-kilometre long ord river. 

parap

masked lapwings strut and swimming lessons kick off while we flick ants—so many ants—off our towels and onto the grass. we’re the only ones here lounging, something i’m perplexed by until i remember it’s both a monday and darwin’s winter, in all its 29 degrees. it makes me think of every other public pool i’ve been to. public pools, like supermarkets and laundromats, have the same formula no matter where they are: swaying plastic lane ropes, rhythmic splashing arms, a chlorine smell that seeps and sticks and stings. trees i don’t recognise stretch shade towards us. we bundle damp towels into tote bags, crunch the empty chip bag into a ball. time to go.  

berry springs

we read the signs along the water’s edge that detail croc monitoring in the area. the sign tells us again: freshies might attack, only if provoked, but salties don’t need a reason. in the back of the car i’d googled berry springs croc attack and read about two people killed in 2011 and 2014. some people prefer not to know about this kind of stuff before they visit. my mind has to know, if only as a small salve for the relentless imagining of what might happen. but when we swim in the springs, it is blue and clear and warm and completely, totally, fine. in this translucent pool, enveloped by bright pandanus and birdcall, i find myself relaxed—completely, totally—floating with the current on a two-dollar hired pool noodle.  

ord river / goonoonoorrang

the woman at the boat hire shop has a now familiar warning: freshies don’t want anything to do with us, but no guarantees there aren’t any salties in the river. the journey up-river is peaceful. we stop once or twice to look at a bird in the canopy, passing binoculars—knockers— between us. it takes four goes to anchor; after each failed attempt i haul the increasingly slimy, seaweed-laden anchor up by its rope and feel like a hot, strong top while i do it. in the end, we find the upper trunk of a tree poking out above the water line and tie the boat to it. we swim twice: first with clothes on and eager, giddy leaps from the rails; second without clothes but no less giddiness. both times i’m not in for long, just enough to feel a rush on my skin and, right beneath it, that euphoric glow.  

nightcliff

people stand knee- and hip-deep in the sea. i try to work out what makes them different, what makes them weirder/stupider/braver than i to stand in a natural hunting ground for estuarine crocodiles, but i find nothing and realise they are all ordinary people who believe, as the saying goes, they’ll be right. i watch sunset after sunset on the cliffs, take long, humid walks past groups of runners, kids on scooters and one guy on his bike, speaker attached to the back, blasting reggaeton remixes of pop songs. in the final days of my trip, i decide i’ll swim. then liv gets home and tells me someone posted in the local facebook group that they’d been stung by a box jellyfish. i’d come around to the danger of crocs, absorbed the local indifference by osmosis, but i’m not gonna risk a jellyfish.  

lake argyle

thirty-five kilometres off the highway on the western australia side of the border. the drive is much of the same, yet still i’m fascinated because it looks nothing like home. colours i haven’t seen outside in months. then: the ranges. the land is flat and then it isn’t, the road slows and bends between vast walls of red rock. then: blue water. the lake appears between two walls, a shock of blue tucked into this desert landscape, made all the more beautiful in its unexpectedness. the small town of lake argyle is almost all caravans and grey-haired, soft-fleshed travellers walking pool to pub in faded towels, asking how ya goin’ as they pass. on a secluded beach at the bottom of a cliff, we drink beers and swim and only afterwards, when we’re sitting on the sand, does someone point across the water at the crocodile—a freshie—gliding along the top of the water.