Litchfield National Park

Friday 17th July 2009
Night time at Bundy Station was rather cold and we had to use a sleeping bag on top of the sheet. We stayed in bed until 8am when it was warmer outside the Caravan than inside. After brekky and a bit of a chat we went for a drive to Batchelor, about 40km up the road, where we checked out the Town Centre before entering Litchfield National Park, the Jewel in the Crown of NT National Parks. The park certainly lived up to the promise and our first stop was the Magnetic Termite mounds. These mounds are long and narrow and aligned to the cardinal directions. The Magnetic Termites live in flood prone areas and can therefore not move underground like most of the other termite species. To survive the temperature changes on the surface they build north-south aligned mounds which only expose a narrow edge to the sun during midday but a wide edge in the morning to gather warmth. The termites move around inside the mound to keep their body temperature in the correct range.
The first photo on the right shows one of the big termite mounds but it's a normal "Cathedral" mound, not a magnetic one.
Our next stop was Buley Rockholes which reminded me a little bit of Woolshed Falls in Beechworth. The creek cascades down over rock formations and has washed large holes out of the rock leaving behind crystal clear pools of water. The second photo shows one such waterhole but only a small one. We went up and down the creek exploring every hole and waterfall and the kids loved playing around in the pools and watching the fish.
There were plenty of other people around as we are still in NT school holidays and this park is only 100km from Darwin. I'm not sure how long we stayed there, probably a couple of hours, but the kids didn't want to leave this fantastic place.

Just a short drive up the road was Florence Falls (photo 3). From the carpark we had to take a short walk to the lookout where we could see two large waterfalls from a good vantage point high above. The well made track to the "Plunge Pool" included 135 stairs down to the bottom of the gorge. The Plunge Pool was the most amazing place I have seen in a long time, two waterfalls coming down from a fair height, a huge pool beneath with steep rockfaces either side of the waterfall and the water running out through the base of a very dense forrest with palms and rocks. A stunning sight straight out of a fantasy story book - I would have called them "Paradise Falls" as the area looks the way one imagines Paradise.
We had another long swim in this hole and admired the beautiful environment for quite some time before walking back up to the carpark. On our way back to Adelaide River we called in to check out a couple of Caravan Parks in Batchelor since we are shifting camp to Batchelor tomorrow morning.