Litchfield National Park

G'day Mates!

From Darwin we went down to Litchfield National Park.

Just after the entrance our first stop was at the Magnetic Termite Mounds. You already have seen through my blogs that there are a lot different termite/ant houses, this is a field  with mounds that stand up to two metres with the thin edges pointing north-south, minimising their exposure to the sun.

Isn't it amazing these small animals can build this!

This is the impressive cathedral termite mound up to 6 metres tall.

After this we arrived at Wangi Falls, here you can camp without power but showers and toilets were there. You take a form out of a box, on the form which you fill out, is a little bag in which you put the requested money and this bag you put in a box at the entrance of the park. Its all about honesty!

With our extra folding solar panel we hope we can stay a bit longer....

our view...

There was a great waterhole in which you can swim, have a nice story about that later!

The Wangi Falls;

Watch the movie...

At night, we were peacefully sitting outside, when suddenly I heard a lot of noise coming out of the bush and at seemed like something big was running our way, and then we saw a huge wild pig passing us at about just 2 meters in front of us, brrrrr, he was to quick to make a picture.....

This was a very special bird, they have entertained us the days we were there. This one I know haha, it is the Great Bower bird, the sexes are similar but the male has a lilac nape crest which forms a rosette in display. The male tries to seduce the female by gathering special things........

In the film its hard to see the rosette but on the picture you can see it quite well...

here you can see what he has collected, he lays it under a tree and they come back to this tree all the time, it looks like they dance around the tree and she is looking what he has gathered..... 

he shows her what he has found and then he often shows her the back of his head on which the rosette appears.......

Sometimes suddenly another male comes between them and then he starts to show the lady what is under the tree but that's not fair, he didn't collect it!

We have been watching this for three days and the poor fella kept seducing and we will never know if he succeeded...

In the mean time the bird also was very busy to protect his treasures.....

At last the little Wallaby left, getting enough of the hissing of the bird.....

We wanted to stay another day in Wangi Falls to go to Florence Falls which was approx. 25 k's back down the road when our neighbour said he was going to the Florence Falls with the caravan. Because I didn't knew you could camp there too we never thought about going there with the caravan so we also packed our things and took off to Florence Falls. When we came at that camp the sign on the road said that caravans weren't allowed so we were very angry and didn't know what to do. Fortunately my bible said opposite, so we turned and tried our luck by driving into that dirt road. It was just 1 kilometre and we got into a campground again, it was much smaller then at Wangi Falls but very nice!

When we had settled we first went to Buley Rockhole;

very nice for cooling off a bit.......

I can tell you a scary story now;

After the cooling off in Buley Rockhole we went back to the caravan, had a nice drink and a meal and after that I was doing the dishes at the parks sink. There was a guy next to me also doing his dishes and we started to talk. He asked me if we had been to Wangi Falls already and so I said we left there that morning. Well he told me they had been there that afternoon and everybody was urged to come out of the water because there was a croc spotted, although he was spotted 2 k's from the swimming hole, its very scary still!!

They had closed Wangi Falls for 3 days!! Weren't we lucky!

Florence Falls from above;

Florence Falls from the swimming hole

Of course I wanted to swim there to

After the cool dive, we did a small walk which was very nice! This is all to be reached by foot from the camping ground.....

We had a marvellous time in Litchfield National Park!!

Till soon (I hope).