Litchfield National Park

Edith Falls

On the way to Litchfield National Park we stopped in for a quick dip at Edith Falls. This is a beautiful place where a small waterfall flows into a massive pool area for people to swim. The water was, let’s say verrrrry refreshing. Our next stop was Batchelor, known to locals only for winning the Tidiest Town award in 2000! This little town (and we mean little) is scattered with tropical trees amongst gum trees and deserves this accolade. It is very green and has an aura of belonging on the east coast of Australia and not inland. The van park we are staying at is the Batchelor Big 4. It is clean, has hot showers and has big camp sites that spread out everywhere amongst lots of shade in an organised chaos type of way. Good ol ‘Jim’ rides his bike around the van park escorting people to the site. Great customer service! From Batchelor we visited the Magnetic Termite Mounds. They were amazing to look at. They face North/South so that termites are able to move from one shady area within the mounds to the other when it gets too hot in the morning and afternoon. At first glance they look like very large grey headstones in a cemetery and we felt we were standing on a sacred site. Up close however they are as hard as stone and enormous. Our next stop was Buley Rock Pools and this was an awesome place to swim in the different waterfall levels. It would have been even better had Glenno not picked Camo up to walk over slippery rocks as they both fell onto them, Glenno taking the brunt of the fall and cracking open his left elbow. We had to stop the party at Buley rock to patch Glenno up. Mel who is Cert 2 first aid trained was excited to use her newly refreshed first aid skills, looked at the wound and decided it needed stitches, but not before a trip to Florence Falls where we bathed in the deep rock pool below the cascading water. Once back in Batchelor Mel dropped Glenno off at the little medical centre and laughed about Glenno having to wait for hours like in an actual City hospital ER! The laugh was on us as the nurses were out at an emergency and Glenno would not be seen for hours! Looks like a band aid will have to do the trick! Who would have known that Batchelor actually deals with ‘big’ emergencies! Mel is currently looking around the campsite searching for a nurse to stitch Glenno up based upon on her expert Cert 2 opinion!

TIP: Don’t slip on the wet rocks, they bite! Wear wet shoes and don’t leave them in the car like we did! Don’t assume you don’t have to wait at little Batchelor’s emergency unit! Also have a play around with your camera’s features before you go away, as it is heartbreaking finding out you have a ‘sunset’ and ‘underwater’ mode after the event!

We spent the last three days at Litchfield National Park at the spectacular and surreal Wangi Falls. They looked like a backdrop to a movie set. There were two sections where water cascaded down the rocks and you could swim out to both. Yes there are signs for fresh water crocs everywhere but with 80-100 people swimming we decided that it ‘should’ be OK and it was! We used our noodles and goggles to navigate our way through the water to the falls each day and even found a hidden rock pool to swim in. And yes, Glenno managed to fall on his already injured elbow again climbing up to the Wangi rock pool! Mel also went off at a silly Asian who thought he had enough room for a somersault, grazing his head on the rock. We also walked the one hour loop around the falls taking in the beautiful tall palm trees, rock faces and tropical shrubbery. We also did a bushwalk around Tolmer falls and Mel mistook a very large blue tongue lizard for a rock missing it by only an inch. It hissed and neither Mel or the lizard were happy. The kids have been awesome on the walks, now that we know how far we can push them, but they are now a bit over walking. We also saw The Lost City where weathered sandstone formations stand tall among the trees. This was the first time ‘Bruce’ (our trusty car) went truly offroad, Bruce performed well and the kids loved it. On our last day we spoke to some fellow campers, Matt and Kylie who told us to visit the Blyth homestead but we were concerned with the two croc infested river crossings. They kindly offered to travel there with us to ease our minds. Bruce did them with ease! Built in 1929, the Blyth Homestead is steeped in history. It was owned by the Sargent family and most of their fourteen children were sent from the main homestead along the Reynolds River to mine for Tin at the Blyth Homestead. The youngest was nine years old. They worked all day every day and one even died from a ‘work place injury’. No OHS back then! Our last night was a hoot. We had seen signs the Ranger was trying to capture a sneaky wild pig who has been walking around the campsite each night looking for food scraps. We had heard it trotting through the bush and had imagined a beast of a thing. After having a few beverages with Matt and Kylie, we heard ‘Grunter’ trotting towards us through the scrub. Matt and Kylie who are seasonal pig hunters had the urge to catch Grunter for the Ranger so, the four of us in thongs tried to corner him so that the Ranger could take poor Grunter away. After running around the campsite we saw he was big, but also sort of tame. Matt was crashing about in the bush for ages but no such luck for us. Grunter 1, the inebriated 0!  In hindsight we should have just lay food out for him as he was semi tame and only stood three metres away from us when not threatened. Unfortunately poor Grunters days are numbered. Pigging was definitely not what we thought we would be doing on our trip but we will tick that off our bucket list. The mid strength beers and Somersby Cider cans are going down a treat! But Glenno won’t be needing his belt anymore! Next stop is Darwin where Glen's dad will be flying over to stay with us. The camping lingo for this is called "Gramping" and we are all looking forward to seeing him.

TIP: Ensure you get there between 9am-10am during peak season as there are only 33 campsites and it is first in best dressed. You cannot book ahead. Again no phone or internet reception. Definitely bring noodles with you on a trip like this (this goes for the grey nomads as well!) Place lots of food out for a pig and wait for it to come to you.

Termite mound "Graveyard"

Buley Rockhole (before the mishap)

The lost City

Florence Falls

Wangi Falls

Blyth Homestead

Wangi Falls hidden rock pool

Grunter the pig