North Queensland

A small settlement, it was the site of one of Australia’s great failed post-war agricultural experiments in the 1950s/60s. A more successful agricultural experiment was the growing of mangos. Top-quality fruit from Humpty Doo is picked earlier than Queensland mangos and fetches a top price in southern markets.

Location: 47 kms from Darwin on the Arnhem Highway.

The 9th Fighter Squadron of the 49th Fighter Group attached to the United States’ 5th Air Force gained the nickname “Humpty Doo Fighters” while stationed in the area in 1942. The squadron was accommodated in a camp referred to by Lucien Hubbard as Humpty Doo after the cattle station with the same name while acting as a publicity correspondent. The actual campsite location was further south than the township of Humpty Doo, to the east of Noonamah.

Places of Interest

The Humpty Doo Hotel is well known and features in several bush ballads, including “The Man from Humpty Doo” by Ted Egan and “Humpty Doo Waltz” by Slim Dusty. It opened in 1971, survived Cyclone Tracy in 1974 and has since become a local icon. In addition to comfortable visitor accommodation, the hotel features a bar area with open walls, a concrete floor, and an iron roof. Local live music acts regularly perform here. Humpty Doo’s Big Boxing Crocodile.

Another tourist attraction is the Big Boxing Crocodile outside the United fuel station (formerly known as the Bush Shop) on the Arnhem Highway. This humorous attraction is a reference to the large crocodile population in the area and is one of the many famous “big things” found around Australia.

Graeme Gow’s Reptile World is also an attractive stop for tourists on their way to Kakadu, with a collection of at least 300 species of snake[6][9]

Humpty Doo Uniting Church is unusual in thaty it is an open air church without walls.

Fogg Dam Conservation Reserve

Fogg Dam, one of the irrigation dams built in the 1950s to cultivate rice in the Territory, is situated on the Adelaide River floodplains 25 km east of the town, and is one of few publically accessible natural wetland environments in the Top End all year round. The reserve is a wildlife refuge, and is significant both as a remnant of the failed Territory Rice Ltd venture, and its cultural significance to the local Aboriginal people. Fogg Dam Conservation Reserve features many walking trails and observation areas. Ranger guided activities are also available. At the end of the wet season, in around March April, native wading birds including jabirus can be observed in large numbers near the dam wall.

• More

Window on the Wetlands

Window On The Wetlands is an interpretive centre that provides an insight into the Adelaide River floodplain to the east of Darwin. The centre’s observation deck offers panoramic views across the Wetlands, which were the locality of a failed attempt to grow rice in the NT in the 1950s. Window on the Wetlands Visitor Centre is perched on Beatrice Hill, one of the highest points on the Adelaide River floodplain. The Adelaide River is one of eight rivers in the Top End which have large floodplains in their catchments. Together, their floodplains create a great expanse of coastal wetlands, one of the rarest and most threatened land systems in the world. They are collectively known as the northern coastal wetlands.

The Visitor Centre provides an introduction to the northern coastal wetlands. There are interactive displays about the ecological processes that occur in the wetlands, the seasonal changes and the abundant wildlife. Touchscreen computers help you explore the European and Aboriginal history of the region as well as find out what you can see and do in the area.

• More

Jumping Crocodile Tours

Jumping Crocodile Tours, on the Adelaide River near Humpty Doo, give a rare opprtunity to see crocodiles in their natural habitat but in complete safety. On each tour, a single crocodile is fed by a tour guide who coaxes the giant creature out of the water. Adelaide River Queen pioneered the idea of cruises to watch the feeding the huge, wild saltwater crocodiles that live on the Adelaide River near the town of Humpty Doo around where Arnhem Highway (the road between Darwin and Kakadu National Park) cross the river. These cruises offer a rare opportunity to see these giant creatures up close in their natural environment from the safety of a cruise vessel. The crocs leap high out of the water to take morsels of food offered to them by the cruise operators, presenting magnificent photo opportunities.



Location: Arnhem Highway, Humpty Doo

The Wet Season (Nov to Feb): for running times and pricing, see website.
The Dry Season (March to end of Oct): Four cruises every day 9am. 11am . 1pm. 3pm.

• Website

Wishart Siding

The Fettlers Mess at Wishart Siding is a heritage listed relic of the North Australia Railway is located near the junction of the Stuart and Arnhem Highways a short distance west of town. The site – the 22mile fettler’s camp – dates back to 1915 and was used as an accommodation facility for maintenance workers when the line was operational. It is the only facility remaining of its kind along the alignment of the former railway. The siding’s name honours W. Wishart, the contractor who built the first railway jetty at Palmerston (Darwin). The Fettlers Mess is within a precinct that comprises three houses and their outbuildings. They were built to accommodate track maintenance workers on the North Australian Railway from Pine Creek to Katherine. The Mess building is the oldest, constructed in 1915 (although some reports suggest it is older) and modified sometime between 1946 and 1949.

Wishart Siding is 2 km from Bees Creek, council seat of the local government area Litchfield Municipality, although most council facilities, public amenities and the actual Municipal offices are in the neighbouring locality of Freds Pass. Bees Creek is mostly rural, with large residential blocks often not served by town sewers or sealed roads. Nevertheless, the area is popular with those wishing to enjoy a rural lifestyle within an easy commuting distance of the city. Settlement of the locality as well as nearby Virginia began in 1869, after George Goyder surveyed the small area surrounding Virginia.

Brief history

The goldrushes to the Northern Territory in the 1880s brought an influx of Chinese miners and the area around Humpty Doo. They grew rice successfully, as had German botanist Dr. Maurice Holtze in Darwin whose experiments growing rubber, sugar and rice indicated that tropical crops could be grown successfully in the NT.

Nothing further became of it until 1954 when, after considerable experimentation by CSIRO, a scheme to irrigate the sub coastal plain of the Adelaide River and produce a commercial rice crop was instigated. 303,000 hectares of land on the floodplain were irrigated but wild buffalo and rats destroyed the paddy fields, birds consumed the seeds as fast as they were sown and the soil proved to be too saline and the drainage inadequate. By 1959 the paddy fields had been abandoned.

Origin of name: The name was first recorded in 1910 for a cattle station called ‘Umpity Doo’ held by Oscar Herbert. A number of explanations for the origin of the name have been suggested. One source claims it is taken from the Army slang term “umpty” used by military personnel in the area during the war years for the dash when reading morse. Author W Hatfield in his book, ‘I Find Australia’ (1943), claims that the name is derived from the colloquialism “everything done wrong or upside down”. Elsie Masson’s book, ‘Untamed Territory’, (1914) refers to the picturesque Umdidu, which was translated by a journalist in 1953 into ‘Umdudu’. This was supposed to be an English language corruption of an aboriginal term which meant “a popular resting place”.