After our short stay in Bees Creek we moved across the highway to nearby Humpty Doo – about a ten minute drive. This was our second stay in the Top End, and after this we had two short stays booked in the suburbs of Darwin followed by a long stay back in a different part of Humpty Doo.

Unfortunately our plans came unstuck when a COVID-19 outbreak occurred in a gold mine 1000km away (due to fly-in fly-out workers) – and although the goldmine had gone into lockdown, it turned out that some of the workers had already passed through Darwin.

A case was reported in Darwin while we were out on a day trip to Mary River National Park, and there was a ‘snap’ lockdown with two hours notice given. At the time of the announcement we were 70km away from Darwin with no phone signal, and we were very shocked to be stopped by the police on the way home and told that we were not allowed to return to Humpty Doo. Apparently ‘non-residents’ were not permitted to enter the lockdown area.

We spent an anxious three hours at the ‘Big Jumping Crocodile’ along with a group of people who had just disembarked there from a crocodile-viewing boat tour. They were also not permitted to go back to Darwin.

The situation was finally resolved when the owner of the crocodile-viewing boat tour company convinced a senior police officer that his boats departed from the side of the Adelaide River that was actually inside the lockdown area – and therefore his tourists had never actually left the lockdown area and therefore were free to return to Darwin.

The lockdown technically applied to Litchfield Municipality, and the boundary of this municipality was the Adelaide River. The map showed that we were clearly standing on the Litchfield Municipality side of the river. “I pay my rates to Litchfield Council”, added the owner.

This was good enough for the police officer and we all got let through – with us ‘overlooking’ the fact that we hadn’t actually been on the boat cruise and had also spent some time in a National Park on the ‘wrong’ side of the river…

The lockdown ended up lasting five days and it was our only time as Jazz Nomads spent under a COVID-19 lockdown. It did mean however that we had to cancel our bookings in Darwin.

Our accommodation for this stay was a converted shipping container in the garden of a resident – complete with its own barbecue area. It was small, but very cosy and very clean.

The owner was extremely friendly and regularly gave us papayas and other produce from their garden. They also kindly extended our stay when the lockdown occurred in return for a case of a beer!

We were also given a few tasty treats as a welcome pack – including something called ‘Humpty Doo BBQ seasoning’ which we sprinkled on our potatoes when we used the barbecue. It was so delicious that we ended up buying a packet to take away with us.