Litchfield National Park

As the weather was not conducive to fishing, we decided to take Cousin Maureen to Litchfield National Park for a couple of days.  Litchfield is about 100 klms south of Darwin and a lot smaller than nearby Kakadu (and didn't cost us to enter it). 

All up, the main road through the park is only about 100 klms with lots of little turn offs to some beautiful waterfalls, cascades, campgrounds and some other great points of interest!

First up we came across what are known as The Magnetic Termite Mounds.  Clever little critters those termites - there are (apparently) genetically predisposed to building their mounds north/south so that the main parts of the mounds do not get the full blast of the sun and are warmed or cooled properly depending on the season.  (Hmmm, food for thought for us humans)  Mind you, the area looked like a giant cemetery!!  There were also some normal 'cathedral' type mounds in the same area which were fairly tall.

The Magnetic Termite Mounds

The Captain, The Deckie and a Cathedral Mound

Most of the Cascades and Waterfalls in Litchfield were open for swimming except Wangi Falls (too much water and too many saltwater crocodiles) and Tolmer Falls (some rare bat species live in the caves under the falls).  On day one we visited Buley Rockholes and then walked down a mountain and swam at Florence Falls, day two we hiked up Walkers Creek (and another mountain) and swam in the top pool and visited Wangi Falls and then on our last day, we hiked up another creek and a set of cascades (funnily enough called 'The Cascades') just because they were there and very pretty indeed.  Last but not least, we visited Tolmer Falls as they were supposed to be the best but we didn't think that they were as spectacular as some of the others.  Mind you, we all slept very well the two nights that we were there!

Buley Rockholes -from the top

Buley Rockholes - from the bottom

Florence Falls from the Lookout

The Deckie cooling off at Florence Falls

 

 

 

 

The Captain and The Cousin at the top of Walker's Creek

The Captain and The Deckie Cooling off again

The Cascades - Half way along

The Cascades - Looking downstream

Curtain Falls - the end of the trail (for us)

In the meantime we found a lovely camp ground to make our base for the couple of nights - no power but it had flushing toilets and hot and cold running water!  Campfires were allowed and so we collected some firewood from the side of the road and made use of this facility to help ward off the mozzies and to cook our dinner.  Yummo, cause look what we had.....

It was a good thing that there were lots of the little critters, otherwise we would have gone hungry!!

We headed back into Darwin on Sunday afternoon as The Cousin was shouting us dinner at Skycity Casino.  A very nice buffett, great outlook over the beach and, of course, another sunset over the water.

Sunset from Skycity Casino

Monday saw us saying farewell to Cousin Maureen and then for us to start packing up to head further into some more adventures.