Litchfield National Park

One thing we can say about the Northern Territory - they do their National Parks very well.  Today we'll be spending the day in the Litchfield National Park.  One benefit of staying here at Berry Springs is that it's pretty central.  We can experience the delights of our natural environment with the Litchfield National Park only about 40kms away - if we go "the back way".  The road is good with only two 10km stretches of good quality unsealed road with the rest of Cox Peninsula Road and Litchfield Park Road sealed.  We packed up our morning tea and picnic lunch and headed for the bush about 9am.  As per the other days here, the weather is clear with bright blue skies and an expected maximum temperature of 32C (the nights are a bit chilly though at 10C.

About 45 minutes later we enter Litchfield National Park and stop off at the information board.  There are information boards at all of the main vantage points.  Estuarine (salty) crocodiles inhabit the waters here in the wet season and the swimming spots are closed in the dry season until all salties have been relocated.  Safe swimming places are well marked.

About 20km into the park we arrive at Wangi Falls.  This is a popular safe swimming and walking spot.  There are plenty of people swimming in the plunge pool.  We have our morning tea and decided to do one of the walks.  We walked past the falls lookout and up to the treetop lookout.  Robert decided to continue walking the loop walk while Cherryl returned via the path.

Back in the car our next stop is Tolmer Falls.  Another walk along a path past some pink sandstone rock to the lookout where we could see Tolmer Falls on one side and the picturesque valley on the other side of the path.  A few kms further down Litchfield Park Road we turned off to the
 Lost Cities.  I'll do a separate post on this.

Back from lunch at the Lost Cities our next stop is Buley Rockholes.  Another popular swimming place.  The round "holes" in the riverbed are caused by rocks caught in the depressions and acting like a scourer as the current forces them to spin around in the holes during the wet season.

Near the rock holes is Florence Falls.  This area is very popular and many people arrive in the morning and stay all day.  We stopped at the lookout because we didn't fancy walking up 172 steps in the afternoon heat after a visit to the plunge pool.

Our last stop before leaving the park was the Magnetic Termite Mounds.  We have seen these in a number of places, these are probably the largest ones we've seen.  The mounds are thin and flat and are in a north/south alignment.  It's nothing to do with them being magnetic, it's all about temperature control.  The north/south alignment keeps the interior of the mound at the correct temperature.  These mounds look like headstones in a graveyard.  not all termite mounds are "magnetic", some are just BIG - these are about 5-6m high.

After our stop at the termite mounds we left the national park and drove to the nearby town of Batchelor where we stopped for an ice-cream before making our way back to our caravan.