Litchfield National Park

On Sunday we travelled out of Darwin to the Litchfield National Park, we drove about 150 Km south and it is a pretty flat country, short shrubby trees and this continent is ravaged by bush fires, the national park authority has a policy of burning the bush early every year to prevent huge bush fires from burning everything, but i think it is a policy that is unsustainable, it looks terrible and I can imagine many creatures being incinerated in the fires, you can see the hawks circling near the flames waiting for the small lizards and other things that can run, to jump out and then they pounce on them, anyway, as we got closer we starting getting up into some rolling hills and we made our way to the first visit, to Florence falls, it is a nice valley with a small river this time of year, the water was clear and not too cold, we managed to walk down some steps to the falls and found about 10 indonesian guys going crazy in the pool, very funny actually,

it was a nice place but a bit too small for just relaxing, too many walkers and tourists.




we then carried on to the magnetic termite gardens, I am not sure if these were created specifically for the tourists but they did look unusual, the mounds are aligned to magnetic north, very bizarre




We also saw the biggest termite nest that Buddha ever thought up




This was just a short stop on the way to the famous Wangi Falls, we actually picked up a couple of hitch hikers and then we got lumbered with another couple of their friends who jumped out of a van just as this couple were getting into our car, very funny actually, 4 were from Germany and 1 from Japan, they were all students and spendign a year just bumming about, working a bit and trying to see everything, it looks hard work, carrying everything in your backpack, I have never done it and dont like to think about it, I am too old to think about it actually. Anyway they jumped out just before the falls which suprised me and they said they were going to a festival at the camp site near the falls, probably to go dancing about naked at midnight like all these hippee types, I never got invited. The car park was big and the area around the falls was very big with a park area and picnic area, the walk down to the falls was nice and along a river and up to the large plunge pool. The little girl was ready in her swimsuit and desperate to get into the water as she is a swimaholic, and when we got to the pool, it was blocked off saying they could not guarantee it wasn't free of Crocodiles, the little girl was heart broken, she cried, so we had to promise her an ice-cream and swimming at another pool, There were many Black Kites flying around, coming down to look around where folks were having picnics and trying to find things to eat, i have never seen so many hawks on the floor before, they were like chickens almost. It was nice but not being able to swim it was a bit limiting, the flood water during the wet season gets to 2 metres or more, And i would love to see that amount of water coming over the waterfalls.




We ate an ice-cream and then drove back the way we came, we had the choice of driving only 50 Km back to Darwin but that would have been on dirt roads and I dont do dirt roads normally, but we had to get back to the other falls, we drove back and thought we would try the Bukey Rockholes, these are the small falls just before the river enters the Florence falls, it is where more tourists go to drink beer and jump into very dangerous rocky pools, not my idea of fun, but the little girl accepted this as the alternative swimming, it was very fresh but very clean, we spent a couple of hours just catching some rays and enjoying the fresh air, we left and arrived home many hours afte we left and we all went to bed about 9pm bushed.




we did see a lovely gray bird that had the craziest pink crest i have ever seen, it is the greater bower bird, this builds a mating arena and surrounds it with toys and shiny things, i was looking at it through my bins and it lifted its crest and i just couldn't believe the colour, a real punk rocker of a bird.