We get up early, about 10km back up the road is a 4×4 track to a place called the “Lost City”, it’s a series of rock formations that resemble what might have been a lost civilisation.
We leave the van and drive up to the turn off, we hit the 4×4 section and the sign says this will be a further 10km, ah well we’ve come this far. Almost as soon as we start sections of the road is covered in water from the recent rains. The worst of it is over soon and the next 7 or 8km is slow, but fine. The last 2 km has some large puddles and some rough sections, seems the grader hasn’t seen this section in years if ever.
We do the short walk around the rocks, it’s quite bizarre how the erosion has created these formations.
It’s takes a further 20mins to drive back, given we don’t have the van on the way back we head to Buley Rockholes. We dutifully drive pass the no Caravan sign and arrive at the car park, only to find parking for about 5 vans. I’ve got no idea.
These rockholes are a little different from other swimming spots. It is a series of small waterfalls and each one has carved out a pool in the rock. There must be a dozen or more different pools. As we’re here quite early there are only a few other people here and after sampling a few of the pools we pick one up the top to stay in. It’s about the size of a backyard pool, but it’s quite deep in the middle with a rock ramp at the other end. The kids (and me) have some fun jumping in. These pools are also cool and refreshing for a change.
As the morning wears on, the number of people arriving is increasing, so the option of keeping a rockhole for yourself is gone, so we leave to go pick up the van.
On the way out of Litchfield we stop by some magnetic termite mounds. Now I’ve got to say, since leaving the north Queensland coast we have seen millions (and that’s not an exaggeration) of them all different types and sizes, but I can’t recall seeing the Magnetic ones, these are the really thin ones.
We head south towards Katherine. On the way is Edith falls, I had planned to stop there on the way up to Darwin, but with the fridge issue, decided against it. So we make the detour and drive the 20km into the falls. The campground looks fine so we stay. There are two pools, the lower one, and upper, it’s a 2.5km walk return to the top ones, so that will need to wait till the relative coolness of the morning. Today we’ll sample the bottom pool.
The falls are not very impressive at this time of year and they are several hundred metres from where you enter the water, so we don’t get up close.
It’s an even hotter night with no breeze, so again not a good night’s sleep.
So…do you realise at this stage you are swimming with crocs…even tho they are just freshies. Exciting nonetheless!!!
Hi Ya, We have not seen a single croc yet. Having said that, at Edith they have a pretty serious salty management plan going. Fences, traps etc
Wow, that rock formation in the Lost City is just amazing, really took my eye, hope you have some more photos of that spot.
Yep, Plenty More, I don’t make you suffer with all of them.
Yabbies anyone?…… PKx
Not yabbies, but there where these small fish that kept biting my legs, The drew blood on another guy there.
Up there they call yabbies cherrabin…a little different to the ones we are familiar with…prawn-like with really long nippers