Litchfield National Park

After a last lingering swim at Douglas Daly Hot Spring we peeled ourselves away and travelled to Litchfield.  I don't remember Robin falls, but it is on the way to Litchfield and we have a picture of Harry and Steve there, so I am guessing we stopped there, maybe only Harry and Steve walked up to the falls.

Robin Falls

In Litchfield we set up camp at Florence Falls.  The weather was not as hot here as at Douglas Daly.

On the 23rd of May we looked at Florence Falls from the lookout. We walked the long way to the lower plunge pool through dry Savannah and monsoon rain forests.
We drove to Tolmer Falls and Wangi (pronounced Wong guy).
Litchfield is a very picturesque park, but heaps of tourists too.
We saw a slide show about the park tonite.

Florence Falls, upper and lower

24/5/07

Went on a tour of the magnetic termite mounds and learnt lots of interesting things from the ranger.
Spent the afternoon lounging around the top swimming area above Florence Falls. Steve walked to Buley.  I would have gone too, but I had to supervise the kids playing in the water.

It's not written in the diary, but my tummy started to play up while I was camped here.  Glad that there was a toilet close by as I felt that I had a tummy bug.

Evan wrote about Litchfield too...
I didn't like Litchfield, it had too much that was closed. 
But I suppose the things that were open were all right, like the water holes.  But people were saying you have just got to go there.
But you just got to not go there.
The opposite.

There was a lot of areas in Litchfield that were still closed after the floods.  This made it a little disappointing, particularly as so many people raved about how good the park was.  Many people told us that Litchfield was the pick over it and Kakadu.  As we were to later find out, we far preferred Kakadu to Litchfield.

Wangi Falls

Edith Falls

After collecting our mail from Katherine post office and doing a spot of shopping, we drove onto Edith Falls and set up camp on a beautiful green grassy lawn. The camper trailers and motorhomes were restricted to the gravel car park area.  But as we had a tent we were able to park our car close by and set our tent up on the grass. Very lovely.
It was so hot that we went for a swim in our clothes at about 5.50pm after we had finished setting up camp.

The following day we walked to the top of the falls and explored the rocks.  We had a swim.  Then after lunch we had another swim in the bottom pool.
That night the kids all got together with shovels and the like for a cane toad muster.  Many of the kids were from Darwin, so were used to this sort of thing.  They roamed the camping area looking for loitering cane toads and bopped them on the head.  Our kids found the sanctioned gratuitous violence against a living creature quite fun, though they were somewhat more conservative in their approach compared to the other kids.

Evan's diary entry is as follows:

Edith Falls

First at Edith Falls we looked at the lower swimming hole, but it was just so beautiful we couldn't stop ourselves, so we went in with our clothes on.
Edith Falls was a good place to swim.

Lawn Hill National Park

What a wonderful find this was.  This was one place that we had been told about before we left home and it lived up to all expectations.  Lawn Hill was beautiful and so were the camp grounds at Adele's Grove.

Evan's diary entry:

Today we're at Lawn Hill.
While we were in Lawn Hill we went canoeing, swimming in the cascades and park and camping ground gorge.

Sarah made a bow but it broke.

I made one too.  It lasted. Every target I hit on the spot.

It's a good bow.

My Diary Entry:

We went for a walk in the Lover Gorge at Lawn Hill National Park and visited Dog Dreaming.  It was an Aboriginal cave with paintings.  They were no where near as impressive as the ones at Carnarvon Gorge.

We had lunch and then progressed down to the cascades for a well deserved swim.  It is very hot.  The water was beautifully warm.

The children made bows and arrows based on their imaginations being piqued from reading Eragon.  The trees at the camp ground at Adele's Grove were well suited to making bows.  They pretended to go hunting with them and practise their archery skills.
Evan and Harry looked very funny with their "armour" on: a few layers of t-shirts, undies on their heads and socks on their hands - Classic!

9/5/07

Today we spent 1 1/4 hours paddling up Lawn Hill Gorge. The spectacular red cliffs on either side were beautiful.

To start, Steve, Evan and Harry went in the three man canoe.  They looked surprisingly like  the Berenstain bear father and his 2 cubs as they rowed out from shore.  Sarah and I shared the second canoe.  I started out in the front and could not for the life of me control the thing.  We stopped and swapped places - it made a HUGE difference.  There must be some physics based rule as to why it is best to have the weight in the back of the canoe, not the front.

We paddled up to the falls and got out and had a swim in the beautiful warm water.  On the way back Sarah, Evan and I paddled back in the big canoe and Steve and Harry took the small one.

It was a lot of fun.