Darwin, Litchfield and Kakadu

This is a little late now as I'm actually over in Queensland, but this blog is for my time in the Northern Territory.

Late morning as we got in to the outskirts of Darwin I finally got signal after not having any since leaving Broome and got a message from Ness. Her message said she’d sorted the hostel for the following night, confused I text back to find out that she was staying in the Novotel hotel in Darwin and there was a key for me in reception. This was sweet after 12 nights of camping over 14 days and was now in for a night of luxury. On getting to Darwin the two Swedes moved to a hostel and I got in to the hotel - the first thing I done was spent around an hour in the shower scrubbing, washing off, scrubbing and more scrubbing. I was totally surprised with how much red came off of me, I went from having a red-orange fake tan look to almost white.

Most of that afternoon was spent chilling out by the pool in the hotel, although Darwin was a bit colder than what I'd been through in the top of WA, the humidity there was stifling. That evening we went out for drinks in town and done a mini pub crawl getting back rather late and drunk.

The Friday was spent firstly moving over to the hostel, it took two goes to get my stuff over there and that was minus the camping gear that I picked up later that day from Will’s car. The next stage was me getting ripped off and having to pay $8 to wash and dry my clothes, especially as the dry done nothing towards drying them. They got left hanging all over our room!

Again the middle of the day was spent by the pool, the only way to stay cool (the air con in our room was only on 7pm to 9am) By the later afternoon me and Ness went for a walk along the promenade park and got round to booking our tour to Kakadu and Litchfield National Park and our flight on to Cairns. The original plan was to leave on the Sunday to do the tour get back Monday evening and take the Tuesday morning red eye flight to Cairns. As the tour that day was the more expensive option, it done the same stops but the tents had beds in them, we opted to go the next day. This meant a quick shopping trip, then back to the hostel to pack my bag and waste another 4 bucks to try to get my washing dry.

While doing this we started on (rather discreetly) the goon. At 7 we went out to one of the backpacker bar/clubs to get our free meal that we’d got for booking the tour. We thought we’d have one drink there and go back to the hostel and get an early night. Well as you can imagine that quickly went out of the window when we stopped at every pub on the way back to the hostel, I think we got in around 12 then finished off our goon. Both of us going off to bed totally drunk.

The next morning, Saturday was a very early start, which went like this Ness shaking me at 5am to get me out of the top bunk, trying to get down and falling to the floor, standing up and realising that I was still drunk! I manage to finish off my packing with Ness laughing at me as I kept swaying everywhere. We checked out and went over the road to wait for our tour. Luckily close by was a cafe that was open so my breakfast was a cup of coffee, an ice coffee and a can of red bull! By the time the bus came I had sobered up but had been clobbered with a huge hangover.

The tour, was using a small minibus that could have 16 people on, but we only had 13 so we had a bit of space. Our tour guide was a young Auzzie called Max and told us he’s nickname was Turtle, how he got or where it came from was never explained. Our tour group was me and Ness, 4 loud and absolutely crazy Italian girls, another equally as mad Italian bloke. A pair of Austrian girls and 3 German girls plus a Japanese girl (surprisingly I was the only Brit and there weren’t any Irish on the tour).
The first day of the tour was spent in Litchfield NP. The first stop was for termite mounds in one area there where both the huge cathedral like domes and then on the board walk there were the magnetic termite mounds all lining up the same way giving the an eerily appearance of a graveyard.

From there was the first of that days swim in the Buley Rockhole, this is a series of small pools and little waterfalls down a gentle slope. This was really nice to cool down, and the group lead by the crazy Italians, with mine and the tour leaders help start peeing about.

From there we went on to Wangi falls, this was a large circular pool with two waterfalls cascading down from the ridge some 50-70m high. The water coming down, when I swam under the falls to the right was really cold. Over by the left falls we found a small circular pool that contained really warm water about 2m up the rock face. Here we terrorised a few of the Italians that were weak swimmers. We took them out on a blow up bed got them to the falls and then swam off with the device, from the abuse me and Dario got for it we tipped them off the bed when they thought they was over deep water (it was only 1m deep). After swimming we had lunch - hotdogs

The next stop was Florence falls; this one had a 20 minute walk down from the top of the gorge, down in to the forest. Again this was two falls side by side, the bit you could swim under was cool but really hard due to the sheer volume of water coming down. The other side you could climb to a ledge about 1m up a put your hands in the warm water cascading down the rock face. Although getting down from this rock face was problematic as there were loads of boulders just under the surface (it had been the same at the previous falls as well) so there wasn’t much diving, jumping, and bombing.

From there we drove out of the park and headed east to that nights campsite at Corroborre, getting there just before dark. I, Ness and one of the German girls decided not to bother with a tent as it was so hot and just sleep in our swags under the stars. Luckily there was a bottle shop attached to the road house so we dived over a got a carton of beer. That night’s meal was Kangaroo steak, Buffalo sausage and salad.

The next morning we had our Crocodile cruise on the Corroborre billabong which is part of the Mary river system. Although the cruise was more of bird spotting and we didn’t really get near to any crocs. We’d been warned that the bloke was a real character, but I'd met worse in the roadhouse, I only thought he sounded like Alf from Home and Away! The cruise was good and we did have some huge crocs swim past the boat.

From there we done the drive in to Kakadu NP on the old road, so we only went past a much smaller sign - there was no hanging off to be had on this one! The first stop we had was at Maguk falls. This was a hard walk up to the top of the falls in what was turning out to be a very humid day. The walk which must have taken us an hour got us to these amazing pools and small waterfalls at the top of the main falls. After jumping in our tour leader disappeared and popped out of a tiny side pool which was connect by a hole about 2m underwater. I had a few goes in and out of this. At the end of this little section was another dive down and swim through a little cave that twisted around came out in the same pool. The next bit was getting up a tiny water fall about 1m high but with quite a volume of water coming over and really slippery (with algae) rocks.

Once up came the real fun, there was another dive down and twist round this one about 2.5m down and quite small so you had to twist as going through, Cliff jumping. I followed the tour leader up, and we started jumping from a cliff around 4-5m up, not too bad but some of the girls did take the time to get the courage up. The next one on was another section of rock about 2.5m higher and this one was a real fall, I'd get the courage to go and then one of the girls on the lower section would say they were going, I done that a few times before we left. The last bit was a swim up the gorge and after going through a little rock arch it went from pool to a rocky stream.

From here we drove up to Nourlangie rock art site that is one of the best aboriginal art sites in existence (and one of the criteria that got Kakadu the UNESCO world heritage listing). By this point I was tired from the swim, the heat, humidity and that morning’s drive from the boat cruise (3 hours or so), I was overly interested as I’ve seen it before but the dreamtime (aboriginal version of Creation) was good.

That night evening we drove down to our campsite at Ganamarr, along one of the worst dirt tracks I'd ever been on - everyone put their seatbelts on as we getting thrown around so much. By the time we got there it was dark, as we’d been longer at Wangi falls than planned, but only one tent was put up. We cooked in the dark - chicken curry and a few hours later everyone was off to bed (it had been gone 1 last night; it was before 10 that day).

The next morning was an hour’s drive along to Twin falls. To get up the gorge you have to take a boat which drops you off nearby and you walk the last bit. The waterfall was hard as it had pretty much stopped flowing in June so it was down to max to give us a description. There was water in the plunge pool and this was another hot and humid day we were unable to go swimming due to the risk of crocodiles. It was here I saw another of those strange Auzzie NP’s (similar to the dolphin feeding at Monkey Mia), there were croc traps around, they are baited with pork or beef and any salt water crocs caught (the more dangerous and aggressive species) are removed. When we questioned Max, as this is interfering with Nature in a NP where it’s meant to be protected, we were told that there’s too much money at stake and too many dumb tourists!

The next stop was Jim Jim falls. This was another hard walk of 1km but along the side of the gorge up, over and around huge boulders in the sun - It took about an hour, with Max enforcing 3 or 4 drinking spots (he had real problems with some people getting them to drink, Ayume the Japanese girl had a 330ml bottle!). When we got there were two pools separated from the river/creek by a rock wall, which made it safe to swim. We went on to the top pool which was huge with the rock face towering some 250m up! Again the falls weren’t actually falls as it was only the odd drop coming down. Loads of us stayed in the water for most of the time and really could have done with another swim when we got back to the bus.

We returned to the campsite and had a lunch of pretty much left overs, and then the long driver back to Darwin. When we got back I got a few messages regarding people buying my camping gear (in the end I just left it in the hostel, as no one was still in Darwin). At the hostel we used one of the other girl’s rooms to re-pack our bags and have a shower, before heading out for our free meal at the Vic.

The original plan had been to have a few drinks go back to the hostel around 11 or 12 get our stuff and go and camp out at the airport. In reality we had our free meal and then Max turned up gave us bands for cheaper drinks and got us all (the whole group came out which I was really impressed with) 4 jugs. We took part in the quiz and the crazy games that accompanied it and came third so got another armband for $25 bucks worth of free drinks for the group.

In the end we left the bar, after a crazy night up dancing, around 2.30. Got back to the hostel grab our bits and the three of us (Me, Ness and one of the Italian girls) got a cab to the airport. At check in the problem with my bag came (when I left Perth it weighed 26.8Kg, I'd got it down to 24.5kg) luckily Ness is under weight and she let me off the charge for 2kg’s which is good for a low cost airline! At this point they offered us the row with the emergency exit, which we took for the extra leg room. Why I don’t know as we were obviously drunk and must have stunk of beer! Next came the fun at security. My bag was tightly packed but I still had to get my laptop out, hand my coat over. This got us to the departure lounge where I got online for 30 mins, before our gate opened and revealed another security check (our plane had come from Singapore so we had to go through to international departures. At this check Ness got called back to the first check, They scanned my bag twice, spending ages looking at the x-ray image, then making me take out my lighter which apparently I wasn’t allowed (it’s been through Heathrow and other Auzzie airports no problems) but they missed the bite spray!

So we got to our gate and on the plane and had the most amazing leg room ever! I managed to stay awake having the special briefing of the flight attendant about what to do. Afterwards I promptly crashed out - I don’t even remember take off. It’s much the case that I don’t think a plane crash would have woken me up!

That gets me to Cairns, where I am at the moment, I'm heading out tomorrow on an over night tour at Cape Tribulation. I’ll do Cairns and that blog when I can be bothered but I’ve spent so long online (and so much) getting pictures on and answering mails.

R

Links for the facebook pics:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=152947&id=597990521&l=7d2ff0bd45
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=152954&id=597990521&l=98b1768471

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