Kakadu to Darwin

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Day 15 – Saturday 14^th July – Jim Jim Falls to Darwin

The plan for the day was to get up at a fairly decent time (sunrise is a very civilized 7.08 am), have a quick brekkie, pack up in the cool morning air and head back into the falls for a couple of hours of swimming and exploring. It took around 45 mins to get to the safe swimming hole, lots of scrambling over large rocks, but it was well worth it when we got there. Unexpectedly there was a beautiful white sandy beach next to the water hole. The water was crystal clear and was inhabited not by crocs but by quite large fish that Luke spent ages trying to catch using his hands and a barbecue shape cracker tied to one of Anna’s shoelaces! You could clamber through/ around the side of the main pool towards a second pool behind it and then into a third, very deep pool at the base of the falls. The water in the third pool looked like it would be very cold but was warmer than expected. So Mark and I decided to swim right up to the waterfall. As we got closer the wind generated by the falling water got stronger and stronger and it felt like you were swimming in a gale. Got some good video footage of the swim and some good photos and then we made our way back to the sunny beach for a relax and picnic.

At around 12 we scrambled back to the car park and headed back to the campsite for a nice cool shower before getting in the car for our long drive back to Darwin. We drove along the unsealed Old Jim Jim Road with some pretty good water crossings until we hit the bitumen again a couple of hours out of Darwin. Again we drove through some controlled burning on the side of the road. It feels strange driving very close to burning grass but no one seemed bothered so we guessed it was all part of the burn-offs.

En route, whenever we got a sniff of Telstra mobile coverage, we made calls to campsites in Darwin trying to get a powered site for a couple of nights so we could recharge our trailer batteries. As it was a Saturday night in the peak NT holiday period we had no luck with a powered site and found that most of the campgrounds were completely fully booked for unpowered sites too. Luckily we found 2 unpowered sites in the Lee Point Resort and arrive just before it got properly dark. Phew. Ros cooked us all a gourmet pasta meal and we enjoyed out last night with the Nichollses, once again looking into the inky black starry sky thinking how lucky we are.

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