Fitzroy River

The first time my partner took me to the Fitzroy River was in 2019. We have been there a few times since. I will try to put all the adventures at the river into one blog.

Our usual camp is Langi’s Crossing, you can find it on Wiki Camps app. Coming from Broome, you take the turnoff about 20km before Willare Road House.

Langi’s Crossing has several camp spots along the river, and you can see the crocodiles on the bank across the other side. Rarely seen a crocodile on our side of the river.

Our favourite memory of our first trip to Langi’s together was me catching my 1^st Barramundi. How I caught it is quite funny. So here I am, just moved from Switzerland to Australia, never fished in my whole live as I considered fishing in Switzerland rather boring. My partner baited up, threw the hook out and left me watching his rod while he went to collect more firewood. Not long after he left the rod twitched and I yelled out to him, not knowing what to do. As he didn’t reply and the line started spinning off the reel I grabbed the rod and wound as fast as I could. It felt very heavy, but no way was I to give up. I managed to land the Barra to my partners astonishment. It was a massive fish, me being a novice thought that is just what you catch in Australia, hence fishing is cool here. Turned out, my Barra was 1.03 m long and by far not the norm. It took me a few days to understand what I’ve done. Everyone chases the over 1m Barra and some have tried for decades and never caught one that big. Me, not knowing what I’m doing, managed to catch one the first time I had a rod in my hand.

You can imagine that I was hooked to fishing from then on! Such good fun with fish so big and often they put up a very good fight.

Only later I learned how you catch a Barra – when they hook on you let them run (not tighten the line) and then you have to yank hard (to make sure the hook is in properly) before you start winding as fast as you can, never letting the line go slack. Well, I probably did exactly that. Not knowing what to do I waited until the line started spooling out, then I grabbed the rod and wound hard and fast.

Another highlight for me was the crocs across the river. It was the first time for me seeing a croc in the wild.

Another first was the throw net. I might have seen them in documentations but never live and in action. My partner is incredible with the throw net. You use it to catch baitfish which you then put on the hook as bait for the barra, if the kites don’t get it beforehand.

There are always Kites circling at Langi’s and they are very interested in the baitfish we catch with the net. One day we enjoyed a smaller Barra cooked in alfoil and left the skeleton unattended after dinner. The kites where right into it and polished it off.

My partners mate and girlfriend joined us for a day and we went for an explore in the Ute. We visited Helmut Schmidt’s shack. Helmut was a German WW2 pilot who moved to Australia after the war. For close to 40 years he lived at the Fitzroy river where he built a ‘house’. The bricks contain beer bottles and the house has two storeys – in case of floods in the wet season. It is incredible to see what Helmut built for himself. How he lived there through the wet season with the crocs floating just metres from his house and mozzies as thick as we had them in my last blog about Mary River , is a mystery to me. Stroll through the ruins and explore the surroundings of the shack that reveal a lot of items from the shack, now scattered around.

There is a movie about Helmut Schmidt. I could only find the trailer of the movie, which is still quite informative: https://m.imdb.com/video/vi799709209/?playlistId=tt1734094&ref_=tt_ov_ov_vi

On a hot day we took a break from the heat and drove to Derby. We visited the Boab and went for lunch at the Coffee shop at the jetty.

We did the trip to Fitzroy with two mates to show them Broomes backyard. One was our neighbour for a couple months in Perth, the other is an old mate of my partner from Geraldton. We had a very entertaining fishing night, catching saw fish, cat fish and barra. The next day we showed them Helmuts shack and came across the old burnt out bus I haven’t seen yet. The mate from Perth ended up with 100s of mozzie bites. He didn’t believe us that they can be really bad out here. We always put long pants and shirt on just before sunset to make sure.

One day we finally brought our 3.5m tinny to Langis. The water was a bit low and we got unstuck on a sand bank. We had long sticks with us to push us off, but this time it didn’t work. I had to get out and push it off while my partner was keeping an eye on crocs.

We got bogged with the campertrailer. It was not long after some decent rain and we had to cross a muddy section to get to our favourite spot. Some maxtrax sorted it , but it was quite messy, haha.

Most of the time we were able to catch a barra for dinner. Some days it was catfish city. Their back spine hurts and contains a poison which is not deadly but very painful. I thankfully never got done, but my partner told me from experience. We had some extraordinary catches though. We caught a crab! She was so into the live bait, that she held onto it until she was on land.

And the most recent and definitely first for me: my partner had a crocodile on the hook. He put up a good fight and when he finally was close to shore he dug all his 4 feet into the ground to fight the tension of the line. In the end the line snapped and we couldn’t get the hook out of him. Maybe better, I am not quite sure how we would have done that to be honest.

The same night we caught another massive Barramundi. He was just under a metre long but put up a decent fight.

On our first trip to Darwin to drop our belongings off we stopped at Langis for a fish. It was the start of the wetseason and we had some storms around us which was a fantastic view.

Now we are in Darwin and it will be a while before we get back there. Here are plenty of rivers to explore, camp at and be vary of crocodiles. Never short of an adventure.

The next blog might be a bit delayed. Bear with me, I will do my best, but there might be a week gap.

Explored in 2019 – 2024, written May 2025