Day 34: Litchfield National Park
Our plans were thrown off a bit when we realised Friday was the Darwin Show public holiday, so we decided to head into Darwin a day early to allow enough time to get the car and caravan serviced. So today was our first and only full day in Litchfield National Park.
To make up for not having a second day in the park. I got up early to do the Wangi Falls Loop walk. The first part of the walk was up along the side of the falls in a small forest that was full of the roosting bats that we saw the previous night. I forgot how loud they can be!! I continued to climb into the savanna forest at the top of the falls that provided views to the valley below as the sun began to rise. There were only a few birds around but several flies, so I quickly retreated back down to the falls.
We spent the rest of the day visiting as many highlights in the Park as we could. Our first stop was to the termite mounds, where we learned that the magnetics termite mounds are oriented north-south in order to regulate the temperature within the mounds. These are not found anywhere else in the world.
Our second stop was at Florence Falls. We walked down the 138 steps to reach the base of the falls. Here we all swam out into the pool, jumped off the rocks, and even swam behind the waterfall. We had lunch near the outlet stream for the falls, where we spotted a water monitor and lots of little fish. Theo spent a long time trying to get a photo of a catfish that kept swimming nearby. Eventually we headed up the Florence Creek track back to the car.
Our next stop was Buley Rockhole (or Bluey Rockpools as we kept accidentally calling them). Here we found a series of little pools created by the river eroding down the bedrock. We found one hole that was deep enough to jump into from the surrounding rocks - it was lots of fun.
The last stop for the day was back at Wangi Falls where we all swam out the far side of the pool to a small rock pool that was hidden near the base of one of the waterfalls. The water in the little pool was warmer than the main pool which was a nice treat until we had to jump back into swim back to shore as the light was fading.
