We did nothing exciting on Monday. It was a day for doing some shopping, having a haircut (Bev, not me) and just sitting around reading books. We did, however, have a very pleasant evening meal around the pool with a couple we had gotten to know and whose company we really enjoyed. Today is much the same as yesterday, really doing it tough sitting in the shade.
Yesterday, however, was another story. We did a bus tour of Litchfield National Park.
Litchfield is about two hours' drive from Darwin, via Batchelor. Batchelor's main claim to fame is the nearby Rum Jungle Uranium mine. Uranium was first discovered in this area in 1949. This was at a time when the USSR, the United States, Britain and the other great powers were seriously contemplating blowing each other, and the rest of us, off the face of the earth and needed a lot of uranium with which to do it. Australia had just learned, through the recently concluded second world war, that there was a serious quid to be made by selling raw commodities to belligerent nations. So the Rum Jungle mine was quickly developed and was in action from 1952 until sometime in the 1960's when the uranium ran out. In the meantime, the area became the most polluted place in Australia, if not the world. It is now considered completely "rehabilitated". One would hope so.
The literature advertising our tour insisted that we would be shown the best of what Litchfield National Park had to offer and by the end of the tour, we were more than satisfied that the organisers had lived up to their promise.
We started the day with a drive down the Stuart Highway to Batchelor. I discovered that you see the road from a whole new perspective when someone else is doing the driving. It was a very pleasant experience.
After driving through the aforementioned Batchelor, we stopped for a morning tea break at a small roadhouse. We discovered that the only coffee you could purchase was of the instant variety which you had to make yourself and a cup would cost $4.90. To be fair you were allowed one refill, but only one. Needless to say, we had none. As we pulled out, the bus driver made it clear that the tour only stopped here because there was literally no where else to stop and when an alternative did arise the tour would certainly be abandoning this stop.
Our first stop of the day, apart from morning tea, was to have a look at a field of termite mounds that were easily accessible from the road. We were able to get up close and even touch one huge cathedral mound. Others, including a whole series of "magnetic" mounds, we had to view from a specially built viewing platform. This post is already getting a bit too long, so I will leave to you who are interested to google "cathedral" and "magnetic" termite mounds.
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| Cathedral Termite Mound about 30 years old. |
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| "Magnetic" Termite Mound; they are all oriented in a North South direction |
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| A field of "Magnetic" termite mounds |
The carpark for these falls is situated on the escarpment at the top of the falls. There is a path that allows visitors to climb down to the plunge pool at the foot of the falls to have a swim. Part-way down is a viewing platform those people who do not fancy a climb down 135 steps and up again. Given the steepness of the climb and the fact that it was unusually cool today, most of us elected to stop at the viewing platform to take a few photos.
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| Florence Falls |
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| If you look carefully, you can see one brave soul having a swim |
Then it was time for lunch. Lunch was put on for us at a place called Litchfield Cafe, which isn't really a cafe but very much a bush refreshment stop. Here we tucked into a light salad buffet lunch which we washed down with a crisp and cold glass of semillon sauvignon blanc. Sure, the setting for our lunch was a dirt-floored, corrugated iron bush lean-to, but the difference in the ambiance, when compared to our morning tea stop, could not have been more marked.
After lunch we drove off to another waterfall, this time Wangi Falls. For those of you who don't know "Wangi" is pronounced "Wong Eye" by the locals. This is an easily accessible swimming spot that is extremely popular, especially at this time of the year when it is school holidays.
I took the opportunity to go for a short walk through the surrounding rainforest. I was struck by the fact that the vegetation was only rainforest thick and lush near the falls and the creek. Further out, the dry season is making itself really making itself felt. It is fire hazard reduction time up here so a lot of the bush is burned and blackened.
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| Wangi falls in the dry season. In the wet, water cascades down these falls in stupendous amounts. |
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| Wangi Falls Swimming Pool |
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| Litchfield National Park Monsoon Rainforest |
By this stage it was 3.30 in the afternoon and, despite the cool start to the day, it was already quite hot. So we were more than happy to climb into the air-conditioned bus for the drive home. It had been a long day with a fair amount of physical activity and not surprisingly, we were very tired at the end of it. Another reason for having a rest today.
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