Blogs from Litchfield National Park, Northern Territory, Australia, Oceania

We wanted to explore Litchfield National Park, and Rum Jungle was the closest location with a good caravan park to base ourselves in. The name Rum Jungle is derived from an accident that occurred in 1871. A bullock-wagon load of rum, destined for the construction gangs, was said to have been bogged near a patch of jungle on the crocodile-inhabited East Finniss River. The bullockies untethered the oxen and set about drinking the rum, having one of history's most glorious binges. I knew of Rum Jungle from my High School studies as the location of one of the world’s largest uranium mines. Rum Jungle produced uranium from 1954 to 1971, roughly one-third of which was exported for nuclear weapons. The rest was stockpiled, and then eventually sold in 1994 to the US. By the time the ... read more

We had a relatively uneventful night in the National Park near Roper Bar, although at about 6am the local fishos (which was pretty much everyone except Adam and I) started heading down to the boat ramp. I’m not sure if they were being considerate or dickheads (to get the New South Welshmen) but they drove their boats past our tent at about 5kph. I’d never realised how much stuff there is on a boat to rattle. We were making great time on the Capricornia Highway to Mataranka. Throughout this trip there have been road works, or should I say lack of roadworks. Basically you are speeding along at 110kph, then there’s a sign for 100, then 80 then 60 and picture of guy digging and then there’s nothing. No sign of any road work, road workers ... read more

Geo: -13.2891, 130.837Today is Debs birthday so we ordered room service breakfast, her favorite thing to do when we are on holidays. I went out shopping to get a birthday card some flowers, a foam esky and some ice. Deb is busting to get a hair cut and makes an appointment and has the biggest smile on her face when she gets a cut she really likes. We head up to Europcar to pick up our hire car and the heat is already punishing at 10.00 am. We scored well getting a brand new Mitsubishi ASX and headed to a bottle-shop and to Subway to get some supplies for our trip to Litchfield National Park. We head back to the hotel to pick up our swimmers and some towels and we are off. Its a two ... read more

It's not too far from Douglas Hot Springs to Litchfield but the bus is slow and we had a few things to check out. The first stop out of Douglas Hot Springs was Adelaide River. We needed to top up our fuel tank and there was a market to have a look at. We walked over to the Adelaide River Inn and I introduced Georgi to Charlie (the Buffalo from the Crocodile Dundee film). Charlie is stuffed and stands on the bar at Adelaide River Inn. It was a bit early for a beer so we just said hello to Charlie and didn't take a photo. On a previous trip to the NT, Lenny had really enjoyed Litchfield so it was going to be interesting to see what, if anything, had changed. We drove through Batchelor ... read more

Hello People, It’s the last day of the tour with Mel and two of the girls in our group today and the four oldies, this is because this whole 13 day tour we are doing is split into 3 sections, so other people can choose to do 3, 6, 10 or 13 days. Today on the itinerary was the drive over to Litchfield National park, some more waterfalls and spring feed streams (Florence Falls, Buley Rockhole waterfalls and Wangi falls). Always refreshing as it is so hot and muggy!! First thing we visited was the termite mounds there are two types, the tallest being the Cathedral Termite mounds these can get up to 6 metres in height, and the Magnetic mounds which are the thin grave stone mounds that the termites build facing north/south, so their ... read more