Litchfield National Park

We made it to Wangi Falls in Litchfield National Park today.  It wasn’t a big drive, but it took us until 4.30pm.  I think we managed to get the last camping site at the camp ground.  That made Grant very happy.

We seemed to take a while to pack up this morning.  Even a few days in one place and everyone was settled and happy to stay with the power and the shops and the swimming pool for the next four months.  Cooper and Oskar found the heavy duty sprinklers and had a great time cooling off, while Katie and Joseph hosed off the caravan and the car, getting rid of some of the red dust we collected in Kakadu.  Nadine and Dominic scratched their sandfly bites.  Dominic’s legs look terrible, covered in great huge welts that he’s scratched open.  He refused to sleep in his bed tonight because he thought he was being targeted where he was sleeping.  Before he went to bed he dug out my portable vacuum cleaner (yes, I bought one just before we left.  Didn’t think I could do four months without one!) and vacuumed up the bugs on the roof of the caravan. 

After we finished collecting our gear and loading up once more, we started the drive out of Darwin.  Grant spotted another roadside Mango seller just too late to pull over, so we did a big detour and finally made it to the stall.  Back into the car with our tray of mangoes, and we noticed the chip in the windscreen that I’d spotted after a big truck flung a rock at us coming into Darwin seemed to have grown.  We decided we needed to get it fixed before we headed off to Kununurra and the Kimberlys in Western Australia so around we turned again and after a few attempts, hunted down a windscreen repair business.  Grant unhooked the caravan so that we could get the car into their workshop, then they had one look at the chip and told us it was an old one and had already been repaired!  We felt a bit silly, but also glad that we hadn’t done the same thing in the middle of nowhere and driven miles for no reason at all.  The man who spoke to us was very helpful and gave us some windscreen patches so if we do get any chips we can cover them and keep them clean until we can get them fixed.

So, back on our way again we checked the email one last time before we left Darwin, and found an email from the glasses people Grant had contacted about replacing his prescription glasses.  Pulled over again and sat waiting while Grant phoned the post office in Broome to arrange to have them sent there, then navigated the web site and ordered new glasses. I hope it all works out.  It turns out the company posts their glasses from Western Australia usually anyway.

Continuing on a bit further, we took the turn to Batchelor, and headed into Litchfield National Park.  We passed the Magnetic Termite Mounds – we’ll stop and look at them more closely on our way out – and pulled into Florence Falls for lunch.  We tried out our tinned chicken….well, it looked like dog food, smelled like dog food, and the kids all thought it tasted like dog food too.  Not sure how to get rid of the other half of that.  Might have to turn it into fried rice.

The walk to the falls was lovely beside a rushing creek along a crazy paved path for 1.1km.  Cooper loved it and ran most of the way in his little red swimming togs.  The falls were very popular with lots of people there.  It was the coldest swimming hole we’ve swam in so far, and there were big black fish in schools swimming around.  They didn’t seem the slightest bit concerned about all the people swimming in their pond.  Cooper saw them and said “they are MASSIVE”.  Not sure where that word came from.  The older kids like to teach Cooper to say things.  He goes around saying “oh Katie, (or whatever name he likes) you stink”

It was so cold, no one lasted long, so back to the car we went and continued on into Litchfield National Park.  We passed the turn off to the Lost City – we’ll visit that tomorrow as well – and finally pulled into Wangi Falls.

Setting up camp seemed to go a lot faster than packing it up, and after it was done Grant informed me there were some mites that lived in the long grass at Litchfield that carried scrub typhus, a disease the symptoms of which are fever, back ache, head ache and a black scab at the bite site.  Nice.

We decided to head off to see how Wangi Falls compared to the others we’ve seen, staying away from any long grass.  They were excellent (I think it was the best I have ever seen – huge, warm and really pretty.  Grant)   A huge cliff with several waterfalls crashing down the rock face.  During the wet season the volume of water coming down would be enormous.  Obviously a popular spot too, because there were steps to climb in and out of the pool with a stainless steel handrail.  The floor of the pool was made of lots of rocky gravel, until you reached the very middle, where it was sand.  Over near one of the water falls there was a large rock pool, warm like a Jacuzzi!  It was lots of fun, until Katie nearly put her hand on a snake while she was climbing back in the water! She said it was greeny brown with a sort of diamond pattern on its back…not sure what type that is.  I didn’t rush over for a look.

Cooper ran all the way back to our caravan in the nude.  At first he was wearing beach sandals, but he soon got sick of that.  He seems to like to shed his clothes.  Hopefully he will grow out of this tendency!  We called him the “dude in the nude” and the “bush walker in the raw”.  Pretty funny.

Tonight we huddled inside the caravan to eat our dinner, hiding from the biteys.  We didn’t like the look of Dom’s legs. 

One of the things the bigger kids have been doing in the past week or so is reading the Little House on the Prairie series.  I brought them along just in case, and Joseph got so desperate for reading material he read the nine books in three days!  He has a huge reading appetite, along with a huge food appetite!  Seems to be hungry all the time and I’m running out of ideas.  He really appreciated the pies from Maryanne and ate them both in one day, along with one from me – his share of the pies I bought for everyone who was drooling over Joseph’s good fortune!  Maybe he’s getting ready to grow.

Well, it’s time for bed again – the crickets are out and the cool breeze has just started.  I am going to sleep well tonight!

Vicki