Day 12 – Saturday 31 July 2021 – 390km

We drove out of our Nitmilik camping spot at around 8.30am and hardly saw another vehicle during the 29km trip into Katherine. There is a bit of nice street art in Katherine on the sides of buildings. We refuelled, picked up a loaf of bread & headed north again. The river as we crossed the bridge out of town was full of water. The traffic gradually built and there is lots of oncoming traffic. It is Saturday, & we lucked it in a public holiday long weekend in Darwin.  The termite mounds start to get taller and there is lots of pandanus trees around. The trees are all growing taller here and the bush has been burnt a lot. We reach Pine Creek and pass the road into the bottom part of Kakadu. The road is now climbing and twisting and turning as we travel through some escarpment country, this is a lot more interesting to see. We reach the town of Adelaide River and the oncoming traffic builds more. Before long we reach the turn-off to Litchfield National Park, our destination today.

We pass through the small townships of Batchelor and Rum Jungle before reaching the national park. Our first stop is at the termite mound parking area, around 15km into the park. The termite mounds are really tall and broad, around 6 metres tall and about 6 metres around at the base. Amazing to think that tiny termites built these from mud & saliva.

We turn off next into Florence Falls, the place we planned to camp – around 30km into the park and drove the 6km to the campground to find a spot. All full, a kind man suggested a few more possible sites. The nearby Florence 4WD only campsite was also full. The next spot is Wangi Falls campsite, around 50km into the park. It is also full, at least the drive is scenic. We continue on and another 4km down the road turn into the Safari Caravan Park, an in the bush experience. As a bonus they have some powered sites so we take one of those and set up at around 1.30pm. It is so hot & humid, the sweat is rolling off me, our air conditioner in the van comes in very handy. It seems a lot of escapees from the other states & Darwiniens take the opportunity to visit the National Parks.

We unhook the van and drive back to have a look at Wangi Falls. There are not many cars in the car park and it is a short walk to the pool and falls. Wangi Falls is actually a twin fall, the left fall is a spring fed creek and the right fall is Wangi Creek, they were pouring a fair bit of water down. Did I mention it was hot, the very large and deep swimming hole at the bottom of the falls was so inviting to swim and was closed, saltwater crocodile danger apparently. So we took some photos, talked to other visitors and walked back to the air-conditioned comfort of our car, is was 34C and very humid.

Our next stop is Tolmer Falls, a few kilometres further on and a short distance off the main road.  The walk from the carpark is great, a nice wide concreted pathway with a gentle gradient to the falls lookout. The lookout is over the gorge and is a sheer drop hundreds of feet below. The fall does not have a lot of water but it is very long and drops into a deep pool below. Access to the pool is prohibited due to the risk of disturbance to the resident bat populations that reside in the caves at the falls. It is very stunning landscape looking out over the floodplains and into the gorge that has been cut so deeply into the sandstone.

We drive back to camp and turn on the air-conditioning in the caravan, what a blessing, so much better than outside. We cook outside but eat inside as the mosquitos have just started to come out, Tereza concocts another great meal to finish another great day.

We are actually fortunate that we couldn’t get into any of the other camp sites because this is the only one caravan park inside Litchfield National Park that has power & we certainly loving this roughing it with the air conditioner.