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Published: September 22nd 2009
Day 146 - Darwin to Wangi Falls (Litchfield National Park)
It’s moving day today, yippee! Nothing can stop us now, well actually that’s not quite true as the brakes are all fixed so they will stop us!! But you know what we mean!
We’re packed up in no time at all, we wave goodbye to the neighbours and hand the boom gate key in at reception to obtain our $20 deposit! It was there I spotted the headlines in todays paper “UFO sighting at popular NT tourist spot”. It seems that Wycliffe Well has done it again!! Unfortunately when we stayed the night there we didn’t see any lights in the sky or funny shaped objects floating around over head that we could write about in our
Waiting for the Mother Ship blog but it seems that they’ve just had another visit from beyond!
We’ve enjoyed our time in and around Darwin, there was still plenty more things we could have gone to see but are feet are itching and it’s nothing to do with ants!
Litchfield National Park is our destination which is only ‘down the road’ really as it’s less than a two hour drive. Tom Tom is programmed
in with the route and it tries to send us on an alternative to the highway thinking that it’s found another sealed road but we’ve read ahead and know that it isn’t, naughty Tom Tom! It’s good but we have to correct it / ignore it on the odd occasion it has a mental block!
If we had taken the route it wanted us to we would have made it to our destination quicker but travelled on 42kms of unsealed road with the caravan which wouldn’t do it much good. The caravan is our restraint to where we can go, there’s no doubt about it but it was a good halfway ‘house’ and we think it’s suited us better than a campervan would have which was what we were originally intending to buy when we got here. We did consider a camper trailer for a short time but budget and one or two other things put that out of the picture for now but had we bought one the alternative route today would have been a breeze as you can pretty much go anywhere you like with them. But hey, we’re here and we have no problem with being
slightly restrained at times as it just makes us think out side of the box for a way round so we don’t miss out on anything! We don’t think we’ve done too badly so far!
We arrive in the National Park and head into Bachelor so we can be sure we have all the information about the park we need. Along the way we see smoke coming from areas along the side of the road, there must be a burn off going on today. It’s quite un-nerving when you drive through a fire, controlled or not.
We stop first at the Parks and Wildlife office but they don’t have a huge amount of information and just a short journey along the road we find a small but helpful visitors centre. I ask about a couple of 4WD tracks, I’ve already got the information but it’s generally good to speak to the locals but on this occasion the lady doesn’t know anymore than the leaflet can tell me as she’s not been along them herself. Armed with leaflets on short and long walks we head into the park proper and towards Wangi Falls (pronounced Wong-guy) where we’re intending to
camp for a couple of nights. Luckily when we arrive there are loads of free bays, it’s quite a good set up here and seems to cater well for motorhomes, caravans and camp trailers although if you’ve got a tent they do suggest you go to one of the many other options as there are little or no grass areas here.
We find a nice empty spot and Darryl easily reverses the caravan in so that the fridge outlet is in the shade! It suffers a bit in the hot weather and although we haven’t remarked about the weather so far today don’t think that doesn’t mean it’s not hot, it is!
In no time at all we’re set up in our new spot and contemplating what to do with ourselves for the rest of the day. By camping at Wangi Falls we are but a short walk from a rather inviting plunge pool, however it’s so easily accessible that we think it would be sensible to end our day here so decide to look elsewhere in the meantime.
Walker Creek walk is described as a wonderful walk up a crystal clear creek where you can swim
in the designated swimming area at the start or at the shared swimming hole at the end. We find it’s also somewhere with ‘walk in’ camp sites which we’d really like to do in the future but first need a tent or some sort of mozzie net! We chat to a couple that have just come back from the walk and didn’t take their swimmers! Big mistake, huge!! They couldn’t go for a swim until they got back to the first swimming hole but we are prepared and are already wearing ours! There are 8 walk in camping spots here and most have small, safe swimming holes off them with a picnic bench / seating area with careful camping instructions, a fire pit and of course somewhere to pitch a tent! The camping instructions are very good and you are asked to rate the people who have camped here before you with regards to how un-noticeable they have been.
The walk is good but the reward at camp spot 6 is better! A beautifully clear large swimming hole with a waterfall and a separate ‘spa like’ rock pool above it! Fantastic! There was another couple swimming when we arrived
but they left shortly after we got in so in no time at all we had the place all to ourselves! It was excellent and we stayed for ages! It was a great place to cool off!
Nobody came to disturb us in our private spa so when we’d finally had enough cooling down time we dragged ourselves out and wandered back down the track. We suspect this place would be heaving with campers during the summer but luckily we are visiting out of season, just, so we’ve got it on a very quiet weekend! Blissful!
Literally as we came to the end of the walking track my hiking shoes just fell apart! Unreal, I’d only bought them in Mt Isa which is just 32 days ago as I bought them on August 19th!! That’s just ridiculous! I haven’t even worn them on any big walks and they’ve cracked right through the middle. It’s inconvenient more than anything given that we’ve just left Darwin where I could have bought some new ones but as it is I’ll have to go back to wearing trainers. Grrrrrr. Where’s the receipt, where’s the justice, good grief it’s hot!
We had
a nice surprise when we were here, I spotted a couple of familiar faces - people that we'd first seen on the snorkelling trip out of Port Douglas and then again when we were in Uluru plus I was sure I'd seen them in Alice Springs. Today we spoke for the first time and laughed about how often our paths have crossed! Wendy and Frank are travelling the world and if you can read Dutch then click this link to their own
travel blog. We're heading in the same direction so we may cross paths again, maybe they will spot us first next time!
The car is bloody boiling even though we put our sunshade on it’s not really helped this afternoon as we think this is the hottest day we’ve had since arriving. Anyway, we head back to the caravan so I can grab my trainers and we can continue with more walking. Dar wants to quickly ‘pivot’ the caravan so the fridge vent is definitely in the shade. I pull a face, it’s so hot for ‘pivoting’!
Anyway, no point giving up just because it’s a tad warm so we make our way back out for another
short walk around Tolmer Falls. Endangered Ghost and Orange Horseshoe bats roost here so you are not permitted to walk through the gorge or swim in the plunge pool below because of the danger from their poo but more importantly because human disturbance might see them leave the area which would be a great shame.
It’s a beautiful view from the lookout and the falls do at least have water tumbling over them! We pant our way around the short but rocky creek walk managing to gain a better view from near the top of the waterfall to the almost sheer drop below. We spot a bleeding Bloodwood tree as we walk, the red sap is oozing to the ground. We’re very glad we brought plenty of water with us as by the time we get back to the car pack we needed a really good drink! The info board said it was Tough at the Top although we think that was referring to the plant life having to either face being eaten, baked by the sun or drowned by the rain but that’s it, no more walking for us for the rest of the day just swimming!
We drive back to a fairly busy Wangi Falls, dump stuff we don’t need in the caravan and head for the coolness of the water! It’s quite a big plunge pool so we find our own space pretty easily. We swim towards the waterfall and consider climbing up to the rock pool just above it but there’s a tail languishing over the rocks into the water and we wonder what it belongs to! It’s a water monitor, only a small one though and by this time a small group of people have taken our place in the rock pool! Darn, never mind. We bob around watching the water monitor and chatting to a nice lady from Darwin then watch a chap clamber out of the pool near to where the water monitor has flopped itself along a branch of a ‘tree’. The chap has no idea this creature is there so we wait a while for his reaction when he spots it - was that a girly shriek I hear?! Funny! Anyway, the chap hot foots it to the other side of the rocks well away from the water monitor who is still chilling out on his branch in the
sun!
After we’d spent a reasonable amount of time getting refreshed and watching the wildlife (spiders, fish, water monitor) we thought we’d do the short walk to the lookout over the falls. By this time we could hear and smell that fruit bats were in the trees close by! We took the walk through the tree tops and then continued upwards onto the escarpment. It’s a gorgeous outlook so we sit in the peace and tranquillity to watch the sun go down. Perfect. We’d only got the small key ring light with us so when the natural light began to fade our walk speeded up to ensure we weren’t stranded ‘alone’ in the dark! We just made it to the plunge pool lookout when the bats started to take to the skies for their nightly feed. What a great sight that was.
Back at camp, which had been plunged into darkness by now, Dar cooked up another feast on the BBQ and I wrote up today’s blog although there’s no internet coverage here so it might be a few days before we can upload it.
It was too dark for reading so we watched a couple of
episodes of Friends and had ourselves an early night!
Love to all
Dar and Sar
Walks: Walker Creek Walk 3.5km, Tomer Falls Walk 1.6km, Wangi Falls Walk 1.6km
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Frank &Wendy
non-member comment
Third time's a charm!
Hi Darryl and Sarah, Thanks for the message on our blog, we've read your's too and we're very proud to be mentioned on a other blog and specially on a blog that looks so proffesional. See you at the next highlight on the Westcoast. Frank & Wendy