Nitmiluk - Litchfield National Park

Edith Falls again

We left Nitmiluk National Park on Tuesday and stopped in Katherine to fix a windscreen chip and chase a mossie net. With the temperatures soaring we are not keen on sleeping 5 in the caravan any more for one night stops, so a net is imperative for the Blunderbuss sleepers. We found one in a camping shop, where Lachie was in heaven checking out all the fishing gear and trying to talk me into buying a Lachie sized rod for "Father's Day"! Edith Falls was not far out of our way on the road north to Litchfield National Park, so we stopped there for the second time for a late lunch and another swim. We all swam out to the falls again and this time I managed to jump off the rocks. I got a good sinus clearout and lost my top for a tangled few minutes, but it was worth it! The family were suitably impressed.

500 ... or was that 430?

We made it to Adelaide River before roo hour, which is always a relief, so we set up and Dave started teaching the boys how to play 500 while there was still a little light. Jackson and I installed the mossie net in the Blunderbuss with only a couple of rude words. The kids were very excited when the Ghan rumbled past us on its way to Alice just after dark. We also heard some big roos hop past, but they fortunately did not stop to do any washing up, so it was a fairly peaceful night.

Come and get me, you mongrel mossies!

Ella was keen to be a horse and run around the
lovely grass racetrack the next morning, but as it was already very hot when we got up, she went off the idea. She contented herself with making her excellent horse noises in the shower!

We didn't have far to go to get to Litchfield but we wanted to be early to get a powered site as the fridge keeps turning itself off when running on gas. And no, this time it is not Mr. Security's fault! We checked in to Litchfield Safari Park and quickly got organised to go swimming at Wangi Falls. The pool at Wangi was only about 70m across, but it was an impressive falls with two waterfalls coming down over the sheer cliffs. Many fish species were abundant in the water, so we got the snorkelling gear out and had a great time fish watching. We kept the snorkel on Lachie so he wouldn't think about fishing rods!

Iceblocks and 500

Wangi Falls

Checking out the spa pool

The kids and I scrambled up the rocks near the smaller waterfall and found a deep, spa pool sized rock hole which was continually filled by the waterfall. It was fantastic sitting there in the water watching the cockatoos fly overhead and water at the top of the falls.

White cockatoos water at the top of the falls

It was a few nights since the last bushfire experience so it was no surprise to awake to a tent filled with smoke and the campsite filled with what looked like heavy mist. I couldn't see the glow from the fire anywhere, so I went back to sleep.

On the drive out to the Termite Mounds the next morning, we got a good view of the fires surrounding us. There were several large fires burning off the plateau out to the west, but a couple of smaller ones were much closer. National Parks Rangers give a lot of free talks in the dry season so we took advantage of the Termite talk and learnt lots about termites and the mounds that we have been seeing everywhere.

Magnetic Termite Mounds

Huge Cathedral Mound

It was stinking hot by the time the talk had finished, so a trip to Florence Falls was an easy decision. This waterfall was different again - a powerful falls and an enclosed, gorgeous pool with sparkling clear water. There were more fish here than we'd seen anywhere, so out came the snorkelling gear again. We bought it for the Reef, but it has been great in the Outback!

The bottom half of Florence Falls

Ella found a patterned rock

Getting lots of use from the snorkels

Dave has trouble swimming without
his pink floatie!

After reaching the vehicle by climbing 135 steps, we were ready for another cool swim (it was 34 degrees!) so we checked out the Buley Rockholes, a series of pools gouged out from the rocks with waterfalls linking them all. There was not much shade, so we slid through them all pretty quickly, but it was hugely enjoyable.

We'll need new boardies soon!

Our drive back home included a visit to Tolmer Falls (where colonies of endangered bats are protected, so no swimming there) and as we were hot (again) another swim at Wangi Falls.

Tolmer Falls

On to Darwin next.


Stay tuned ...

Got a good view of one of the fires

Right, let's go for another swim!

Mataranka - Nitmiluk National Park (Katherine Gorge)

More Hippos in the Water Hole

We were tempted to extend our stay at Mataranka, but we packed up, parked the van and caravan and spent the next hour in the pools as the next best option. There weren't very many people there, so to the kid's delight they were able to jump in off the edge and make hippo noises to their heart's content. The pools were fed by Rainbow Springs which bubbled up out of the ground at an astonishing rate - 30.5 million litres per day. The water then flowed down into the Roper River which was a curious green colour. Any crocs lurking in there would have been hard to spot. We managed to get the kids out of the pools for the hot drive through sparse woodland and termite mounds to Katherine.

More keen on the washing up than any of the kids!

Nitmiluk National Park was our next destination, and was not too far, so we arrived in good time. Fortunately the park was not full and we got set up and booked a canoeing trip for the Katherine Gorge. The park was bone dry and mostly dust, but the pool was fantastic so we quickly headed over for an afternoon of swimming. The pool was surrounded by lush, green grass. The kids took off their shoes and enjoyed the feeling of grass underfoot for the first time in at least a month! (OK, Dave and I did too!) The other highlight of the day was the wildlife - we had wallabies hopping around our camp and the kids hand fed them carrot pieces. They were entranced when one female had a tiny joey which got out of her pouch to hop around. The female was enjoying some free time when the male came over and decided to try to mate. She was not keen and tried to hop away. He grabbed her tail and spent the next 20 minutes hanging on to her tail in a vain attempt to stop her. She was grunting at him as she hopped away (it sounded like "bugger off") and we all thought it was pretty funny! Dave and I were not so entranced when a big male came back into camp during the night and knocked everything over. He was about 10 cms from my head (I was in the tent) and spent about 20 minutes carefully lifting our foam mats to eat anything that had fallen through!

We had just got to sleep when one set of neighbours arrived back and proceeded to open and slam closed their vehicle doors. More than us must have been awoken, as a laconic voice drifted through the camp:

"Jesus, mate, how many bloody doors have you got?"

Our next day at Nitmiluk was spent cleaning, repairing and washing. The pool looked awfully good by the time we took our picnic lunch over! The kids were in the water for so long they all had sore eyes and needed eye drops to be able to blink again! The wallabies entertained us around camp again at dusk, although the male must have got the message as he didn't show up.

We decided to take a trip into Katherine for some essentials on Sunday morning. We left a bit later than anticipated, so it was a horrible surprise when a wallaby walloped into the side of the van. It was being chased by a dog and obviously didn't see us at all. Poor thing died on impact and we now have more to tell the insurance company when the phone has reception!

Edith Falls

We enjoyed the air-conditioning in Katherine so much we nearly didn't continue on to Edith Falls (on the northern edge of Nitmiluk National Park) but boy were we glad we did! The falls emptied into a vast pool which was absolutely magic for swimming. It was 150m across to the falls and we all swam across to check it out. The boys found a 2m rock platform to jump into the water from which kept everyone occupied for hours. Ella graduated from a rock at the water's edge to the high rock during the afternoon. I tried many times, but chickened out at the vital moment, to my disgust. Ella tried to console me. "It's OK Mummy. You still did really well for a mummy."

Dave had a pink floatie to help him!

It was a terribly hot 60kms back to the caravan so we had another swim in the pool. Deciding we needed to carb load for the canoeing the next day, we had dinner at the Bistro. The $15 all you can eat plates were as big as the Northern Territory and even Jackson could not completely empty his. He made several valiant attempts, swimming lengths and playing tag in between!

We finally left the water and went back to try to get some sleep for our big day. Others close by were intent on having a big night and may as well have been in our tent with us for all the protection it afforded from the noise. So it was difficult to get out of bed when the alarm rang the next morning to get organised for the canoeing.

First paddling since NZ

Three double canoes were quickly filled with food, water and us and we left the banks of the Katherine River to paddle upstream through the gorges. Dave paddled with Ella, Lachlan and I were in together and Jackson and Marcus made up the last boat. We had so many waterfights that it is a wonder there are any photos at all, but after a near miss we devised the call "Camera Out" which let us take some photos! We had the most wonderful day paddling up the first three gorges, exploring the rock faces and caves, climbing up into rocks sculpted by the water and swimming. Freshwater crocodiles live in the river but we didn't see any at all, although there are many sandy areas where you can't beach the canoe as they are breeding areas. The rangers trap the salties before declaring the park open for swimming. I'm not sure how they know they have got them all, but it was so hot we enjoyed the swimming anyway. All of us agreed that it was the best day we have had so far.

Jackson and Marcus

Towering cliffs in Gorge 2

Jackson Hole

Sunscreening again!

Camera Out!

                          

Amazing scenery

 

Stay tuned ...

What croc?



Alice - Mataranka

We were going to ceremonially divest
ourselves of our jumpers for the photo
 - but it was way too cold!

Leaving Alice, it seemed that half the state was on fire, and the other half had just been burnt. The drive out of Alice showed us how close the bushfire came to town last time we were here. We travelled back over familiar territory and crossed the Tropic of Capricorn for the third time. It was our first chance to take a photo! There were two huge wedgies on roadkill at the side of the road. They couldn't care less about cars, but kept a wary eye on me as I tried to get closer for a photo. Another moment when a really good zoom lens would have been handy!

Ella said "Two Eagles having a date at a cafe"

Mark Egan's Anmatjere Man Statue

Aileron is home of the huge warrior statue. The spear tip is 17m high!  He has a companion statue and she is quite anatomically correct, as we discovered as we walked closer! We met the sculptor Mark Egan (Ted's son) and bought a piece of Aboriginal art before travelling on.

We had lunch near Central Mount Stuart, which Stuart calculated (very nearly correctly) to be the centre of Australia. At this point we were over 1000 kms from the sea in any direction.

Master Shi-fu beats travel boredom!
Gum has 101 uses.

After kilometres of bushfires, we stopped for the night at Karlu Karlu (Devil's Marbles). The dingoes were still there, although Ella was much braver this time! We were stoked to see a rock wallaby silhouetted on the rocks at sunset.

We spent a very pleasant evening with our neighbours in the next site, Di and Mike, swapping “Best Of” travel tales, as they were heading south and had many great recommendations for our journey north. Just as we were all heading to bed, I noticed a fiery orange glow in the sky, far too close for comfort. And so it was another night of little sleep worrying about fires and wind direction – but knowing this time that there was no-one fighting it. Jackson was worried too, as every hour or so he’d ask “What’s the fire status Mum?”. Fortunately the wind did not change and we did not have to put my emergency plans into action – roll the caravan a couple of metres forward into the gravel, get rid of the gas bottles, wet all the beachtowels and put out the fire at the edge of the campsite! (Someone told us the next day that the whole place was burnt out by lunchtime, so we were very lucky!)

Took these photos of the fire as we left the next morning – it was less than a kilometre away by the time we drove off. We stopped at Tennant Creek to refuel and went up to Battery Hill for morning tea. We decided to book into the caravan park there to go to “Jimmy Hooker’s Bush Tucker Show”. The Battery Hill Gold Mine Tour also looked too good to miss. It was. Ray, our guide, took us into the mine at 3 p.m. and proceeded to yell at us (he had a bad case of industrial deafness) for the next three hours.

Drilling with the Panther Drill

We were the only ones there, so he really went to town, telling us so many colourful stories. He arrived here in the 1970s, passing through (as most people are) and got talked into a job earning “more than the doctors in Adelaide”. He turned up for his first day at work, having no idea what he was going to do. He was more than a little surprised to find that he was going down to the bottom of a mine to fix equipment! He demonstrated all the mining equipment for us – it was 1930s vintage – and let the kids climb aboard for photos. In the “crib” room, there was a large lunch table, which we thought must have been convivial. Ray soon set us straight: “The tables are big enough to take an injured miner while you do first aid. Two miners fit when it gets busy”

A card game in the crib room

You do what on this table?

Ray casts an expert eye over the noodling

At the end of the tour, he took us out to the noodling area and showed us how to find gold in the magnatite rocks. It was abundant, so in no time flat the kids had all filled their jars and we prised them away to get back in time for the Bush Tucker show.

Jimmy and bush coconuts

Jimmy Hooker was another great character. He told us his life story around the campfire, performed some bush poetry that he’d composed, and then showed us a range of bush tucker. We tasted some new things and Lachie was very adventurous, eating a "water caterpillar" from a bush coconut. We all really enjoyed the evening and learnt a lot.

The night took a turn for the worse when an Aboriginal guy started beating up his girlfriend a couple of metres away from our caravan. There was a high  barbed wire fence around the van park, so Dave raced over and shone a torch on them. The guy ran away and the girl then talked us out of calling the police, saying she'd give the boyfriend a second chance. We thought he'd probably had more than two chances already.

We headed out of Tennant Creek the next morning, feeling that we had met two of the town's great characters and two of the town's less fortunate. We stopped at the Tennant Creek Overland Telegraph Station, and found 3 native plants that Jimmy had shown us. Marcus collected some native lemon grass to make us tea. We had a stooge around the station and the graveyard, then headed north. It was already getting hot, and we remembered the 3 year old's comment from the social history museum in Tennant Creek. He had been sent outside for being naughty, but knocked on the door 3 minutes later. "It's too bloody hot out here Mum" he said!

Our travel went well, as Ella was having a great time playing with a tiny tea set that I bought that morning as part of her birthday present. Marcus kindly offered to play "Teapots" with her which brought hoots of laughter from the other two. Ella was disgusted with them. "Well, none of you other buggers will play with me."
("Teapots" turned out to be "Teapots and Evil Guys", but they were both happy!)

We heard on the news that the Fire Alert from Katherine to Darwin has been revised from Catastrophic to Extreme, but is likely to go back up to Catastrophic tomorrow. There will be no more camp fires for a long time, I suspect.

We found more of "Jimmy's" native plants near the John Flynn Memorial. Marcus added the wattle seeds to his collection. They are great as soap and also stop insect bites from itching. It may come in useful as we head into mossie territory again.

Collecting wattle seed pods. The closest Marcus has
come to soap for a month!

We did a free camp at a layby and Jackson was absolutely thrilled to be invited in to a renovated school bus. He has been designing a touring bus for the last couple of weeks and Ian and Alana kindly let us all troop through their home. (Mum -Ian has recently retired from Principal of The Channon school, and Alana worked in the office at Blakebrook School.) Back to the caravan, where Jackson spent an hour and a half tightening all the loose screws and we tried to wedge the fridge back into the kitchen unit. While in the Northern Territory, the fridge has decided to go walkabout.

Met a drover - he was a big fella.

We watched our last big plains sunrise for a while. The vegetation changed dramatically just outside the tiny town of Newcastle Waters, where the drovers used to meet to take stock through notoriously dangerous routes. The introduction of road trains has stopped the droving - the last big drove went through in 1988 as part of the Bicentennial celebrations. We spent the morning absorbing the history of the place and visiting The Junction pub relic and the old store.

A friendly bar-tender in The Junction
Hotel ... but you could still see the bullet holes!

Newcastle Waters was aptly named - water everywhere and we saw lots of water birds, including some brolgas and egrets. We were also very excited to see grass for the first time in a month!

The birds were magnificent

The famous Daly Waters Pub was our  next stop. It was built in the 1930s and is a truly unique place. The whole pub is covered in collections ... tshirts, caps, bras, identity cards, licence plates ... and it is a visual symphony.

We reached Mataranka mid-afternoon and set up quickly so we could swim in the hot pools. We practically ran down the path through the palms and forest - except Ella, who was dawdling along. I asked her what she was doing. "I'm going slowly through the forest to enjoy it - we haven't seen one for a very long time" she said!

Enjoying the cool forest

Hippos in the watering hole

The kids all blew up their swim shirts and made noises like hippos, so the Mataranka Thermal Pools sounded like an African watering hole! After a long swim we visited the replica Elsey Homestead, which was the setting of We of the Never Never, filmed in the 80s. We sat for a while on the homestead verandah, watching the wildlife water at the bore. The rest of the evening was spent feeding the peacocks and wallabies around camp.

Stay tuned ...

Battling Bureaucracy in Alice

The kids were disappointed that we missed the Regatta by a couple of hours, but cheered up enormously when they realised that the campground did a free pancake breakfast on Sunday morning. We duly attended this morning, where we met up with Ukulele Laurie, from Kings Canyon. We invited him to come busking with us, but he was off to Hermansburg. After a good scoff of pancakes, we got organised to go busking.

Despite the fact that we had booked in with the Market Organiser, and had made four phone calls to the Alice Springs Council to confirm permission, the Ranger had not been notified and he would not let us busk. The Markets were pretty busy too as it was a big weekend in The Alice, so it was a real shame.

However, we did learn a few things while getting into our 1930s costumes. Marcus forgot his boots. Ella has almost grown out of her new dress made so lovingly by Gran. I forgot my 1930s hat. I also forgot to organise footwear for myself. So we have a few things to do before our next attempt.

We trundled back to camp and spent the rest of the day here. The kids had a swim and tried to trick me into getting in, telling me that it was the warmest pool they had been in yet. I cottoned on to the fact that none of them were actually in the water when they told me that, so I didn't fall for it! Lachie and Ella had a great time on the jumping pillow, Marcus took the harmonica into the van to learn a break, Jackson, Dave and I started learning a couple of new songs and the day disappeared.

Tomorrow we head north on our way to Darwin. We are looking forward to the hot springs along the way after all our icy pool experiences lately. We are also looking forward to the temperatures warming again, as it is freezing sleeping in the tent since the cold change came through!

Stay tuned ...