Heli Pub Tour
Jump aboard the ultimate pub crawl with a heli tour of five famous Top End watering holes, and enjoy a bird’s eye view of the Territory
“L STORY & PHOTOS LEANNE HUDSON ife wasn’t meant to be easy, it just turned out that way,” said possibly no one ever. Except King Kai, overlord of Goat Island in the middle of one of the most crocodile-infested waterways in the world.
Kai and his kingdom hit the headlines this week with the sad news Hot Dog, his famous singing jack russell, had died at the magnificent age of 14. But Hot Dog’s partner Pippa the Dumb Blonde remains, waddling around this slither of land marooned between two tributaries of the Adelaide River. Here you will find Goat Island Lodge, a place you have to see to believe.
Nestled in a clearing carved out of the cathedral-high stands of bamboo that cover the island, the rustic lodge consists of a few air- conditioned cabins, a plunge pool, and Casey’s Bar. Casey being the resident croc, of course. Oh, there’s also a helipad, just in case you feel like choppering in for a beer, and that’s what we’ve done thanks to the Heli Pub Tour run by Airborne Solutions.
Goat Island is one of five distinctly Territory watering holes we will visit on this tour, which whisks you up and away over Darwin, taking in the flood plains, wetlands, coastline and more.
We start the day with a 10am beer at The Lodge of Dundee — possibly the first time in my life I’ve stood waiting for a bar to open.
A trip that usually takes an hour and 45 minutes by road is whittled down to a fraction of the time — and a much more enjoyable experience — by Roy the chopper pilot flying us out over the deep blue Darwin and Bynoe Harbours. Dissected by long slithers of sandbars and chains of uninhabited islands petering out into the ocean, it’s a view of the Top End like no other.
Not content with offering the best pub crawl in the Top End, Airborne Solutions also has the answer for anyone wanting to pop the big question — they run Romantic Sunset Getaway trips to one of those islands, where it’s just you, the object of your desire, a five-star platter of nibbles, drinks, and a sunset that’ll probably be so beautiful it will be burnt into your memory forever.
But back to the pub crawl. The bonus of helicopters is they can fly low, so you get a unique bird’s eye view of what’s going on beneath you. After hovering at 2000ft over water (a legal requirement) and marvelling at the vast swathes of mud swirling into the harbours courtesy of a recent wet season monsoon — it looks like layers of rippled ice cream — we swoop down to a mere 500ft for the rest of the day. We spot a turtle bobbing just off the coast, brumbies splashing in a rural billabong and wallabies bounding around — or just sitting on the ‘landing pad’ (ie paddock) at Dundee. Around 125km south west from Darwin, Dundee is a stunning spot, with the lodge set just back from the pristine beach famous as a launching point for fishos. As we swoop in we feel far more important than we are as campers squint up into the sun, trying to work out which celebrity is about to land.
A swift schooner and we’re back in the air, heading to Crab Claw Island Resort. This overlooks beautiful Bynoe Harbour. Treetop walkways join elevated cabins to the bar/ restaurant, which is open on all sides, allowing the breeze to flow through. We feel as if we’ve
been transported to some Balinese beachside haunt, but even Bali’s not this close.
Roy lands us right on the beach with as much ease as if we’d pulled up in a car. After a beer and a quick introduction to the resident joey a group of interested fishos give us a good-natured send off, complete with a few bare bums.
Darwin River Tavern is next. Dropping us off on a grassy paddock in front of the beer garden, Roy, who hails from South Africa via WA, but is already in love with the Territory after less than a year here, choppers off to refuel while we enjoy lunch. The simple ease with which the chopper does its job belies its marvellous mechanics and price tag — apparently $600,000 for a brand new R44 Robertson like this.
Back in the sky Hector the Convector — a cloud formation unique to the Top End in the wet season — rises in the distance to our left, while acres of tropical crops fan out below in formation. Located among them lies the infamous Humpty Doo Hotel. Built in 1971 it survived Cyclone Tracy in 1974 and still sports open walls and a tin roof. But these days there is a fancy merchandise shop so you can take a piece of the place home with you.
At Goat Island we land in a clearing surrounded by the bamboo, which only flowers once every 30 years or so — when it does, indigenous people believe it's a bad sign.
It’s hard to imagine what lies ahead as we stroll through the dappled sunlight squeezing its way through the dense foliage, which soon clears, revealing a uniquely Territorian establishment. A higgedly piggedly collection of cabins and structures leads us to Casey’s Bar, complete with all kinds of photos and paraphernalia pinned to the walls.
There are pictures of Casey enjoying a bowl of tucker in the background while the former lodge owner tucks into his own dinner at a table mere metres away; a pair of flippers with a ‘For Hire’ sign that reads ‘Free for Victorians’; and a menu for the Plenty Crocrot Bistro, where the slogan is ‘Not the best, but good enough’.
What’s available depends on whether Kai’s made the boat and car journey into town recently or not (and if ‘the cook is sober’). But he’s more than happy to take phone orders from hungry fishos out on the water when he’s stocked up.
Kai, originally from Denmark, and his wife bought the island 13 years ago after 23 years living in Darwin’s rural area — “we had to move when they put traffic lights in”.
“My wife jokingly said ‘let’s buy an island, there’ll be no traffic lights there’, and the next day her sister found this one, so we did,” Kai explains. “It was done on a whim, to find an interesting life.”
He was 52 at the time and certainly found one. His wife now lives in Queensland — “we see each other once a year” — but Kai will stay put as long as his health allows.
After a yarn over a bowl of seasoned baby potatoes — ‘crocodile balls’ — and with an ‘airy’ in hand (the chopper version of a ‘roadie’) it’s time to fly, with Kai’s words ringing in our ears. “I live in a pub on my own island”. Maybe he’s right about that easy life.
The writer travelled as a guest of Airborne Solutions