Day 58 – Darwin to Litchfield

It’s good to be on the move again. Whilst it’s been great in Darwin, I kinda felt trapped or held to ransom over the fridge, but now we can move at our own pace again. It’s not till 10:30 that we are away.

We head towards Litchfield national park. There are two entrance road, but one has about 15km of dirt, but it’s shorter and will save back tracking, beside even google maps recommends this way. Justine is just thinking about the new fridge.

The road is mostly fine, just a couple of small rough patches so we make it through with ease.

• 

• 

Our first stop is Wangi Falls. It’s a waterfall with an easy to access waterhole for swimming. We find out how easy access it is as we turn up and there are two tourist coaches here, that and dozens of cars.

The waterhole is pretty large, and it would seem coaches don’t allow flotation devices. So most of the coach people are in the shallows near the steps allowing us and a few others to swim and float over to the falls on the other side of the pool.

• 

We’ve been told that Buley Rockhole is the pick, so we head off to them. These are next to the Florence Falls, which also has a campground. As we arrive at the turnoff for Buley, we see a sign that says no vans, oh OK. So we head onto Florence. Access to Florence is a little harder, it’s only a short walk, but it is about 130 stairs down to base. Needless to say, there are no coaches here. The falls and the waterhole here are beautiful and the water is cool and refreshing. We spend about an hour here.

I’ve been undecided about staying in the campsite, as there is no power, and the van is really hot, but it seems to be cooling off a bit and it would be good to stay here and not need to drive the extra 40 odd km to the nearest caravan park. We do a lap of the campsite and decide to stay.

• 

• 

After setting up, we notice that the campsite is as close to the waterfall as the car park, only in the other direction, it’s about 5:30, we still have an hour or so of light, so we go back to the falls again. When we arrive there is an older couple, but they leave shortly after and we have the place to ourselves for a while. It’s pretty magical.

We see some thunderstorms around and on the walk back it starts to rain, that’s fine we’re all wet anyway and it cooling. As we get to the van we notice that we’ve left the roof vents completely open, crap, so we’ve got water in the van. Fortunately not too much, but the outdoor chairs are all wet, along with the fire I’d got ready to light too.

• 

We have dinner inside, then I have go at getting the fire going, it’s not too wet and eventually we get it going.. It’s seems odd having a fire when it’s so hot outside, but it’s good entertainment too

It’s a hot night and I don’t think anyone sleeps well.