We explored the South Alligator River, all the way to the river mouth and halfway around the Field Island. It turned into a bit more of an adventure than we bargained for.
The days before our South Alligator trip the weather started changing and we got some first build ups and storms with decent rain.
The forecast for our trip was good though, no storms forecast until we were due back. We arranged to get dropped off at the South Alligator boat ramp as we didn’t want to leave our Ute and trailer unattended for two nights.
We got to the river mouth when the tide started going out. Knowing that there are lots of rocks around the island we decided to save this section for the next day on incoming tide in case we’d get stuck. We parked up in the river for the night and fished around some snags, which is perfect Barramundi country, at least in Western Australia.
We were in for a surprise – we caught Catfish, that big I didn’t even know they grow that big! Some were definitely over a metre long! As entertaining as it was, it was also disappointing, as Catfish was the last thing we wanted on our hook!
The next day we went out to the island and tried hard to find fish. It was a beautiful morning, but we had no luck locating the fish. We caught a Remora (also known as sucker fish or shark sucker) and a few sharks.
We decided to camp up the river again, just to be less exposed to weather changes, especially wind. The sky certainly looked like the storms would come a day early.
While we were cruising up the river the weather came in hard and fast! We got soaked before we even found the tarp to put over our shade to cover a good part of the boat.
The water started to get quite choppy during that first storm, and we went further up the river where we found a nice spot to anchor for the night and sit out the next storm. The rain was pelting down, our tarp was flapping wildly, and we were a bit concerned about the lightning. It was amazing to watch the weather though.
We copped a third storm that night and an even bigger scare!
Our drift alarm didn’t work because the setting changed to give alarm when we enter the circle, instead of when we leave it. We drifted a good 8 kilometres or more upstream with the tide before we noticed – I mean, we were asleep! Since we were sleeping on the chairs because everything was wet, we didn’t sleep that well and woke up every so often. With the cloud cover we couldn’t really make out the shore, it was a very dark night. At some stage we used the torch and couldn’t see land in any direction, checked the sounder and sure enough, we were miles away from the marked spot for the night. With headtorches we tried to navigate closer to shore again and dropped the anchor, reset the drift alarm correctly this time, but still, couldn’t really relax after that.
The next morning we had another go out of the river mouth before it was time to head back to the boat ramp to be picked up.
After this stormy adventure we both had to head back to work. A few days later I had a day off and explored the East Alligator area. Keep an eye out for the next blog.
Explored in October 2025, written December 2025