Litchfield Trip – the last?

Posted on 19 September, 2015 by stuart

Claire’s friend Reb was up so we headed to Litchfield. Did the normal trip, photos at Wangi and Florence, swim at Sandy Creek falls and the Buley Rockholes.

The trip was great fun, perhaps a little sad as I am not sure if we will return again to Litchfield. Very unlikely we will return to Sandy Creek falls (Tjaynera) which is my favourite place in Litchfield. The build up is coming, the storms will hit soon, the barra will be biting… and we have the impending move to Melbourne.

It was a great day, though Claire had forgotten about the 1.7km walk to the waterfall, and she wasn’t happy with it. Nice to have a drink or two at the Buley Rockholes in the afternoon, it was the first time that I had drank at Litchfield, but I have to say clearly an amateur at it with my two XXXX Gold cans, most of the boys at the rockholes were carrying cases of bundy.

No complaints from me, apart from Reb and Claire ganging up on me music-wise, you try a few hours of clubland…

Sandy Creek Falls

Buley Rockholes

Greenant day trip in the wet season

Posted on 28 February, 2015 by stuart

Much of my memorable adventures start with reading the Kakadu or Litchfield access report, find a place and calling the rangers up and asking about it. In this case I called the Litchfield rangers to ask about swimming at greenant creek. A quick google search said there was a rockpool you could swim at, the access report said the track was open, but didn’t mention anything about the swimming. What followed was a hilarious conversation with a helpful ranger handicapped by the world we live in. Basically he said:

“there isn’t anywhere that is zoned for swimming there, so I can’t tell you you can swim there. But there is a rockpool above the waterfall that people swim, I swim, and we don’t mind. You don’t have to worry about crocs but you do have to worry about flash flooding, since you’re on top of a waterfall.”

Litchfield in the wet season is generally pretty full, as you can only swim at Florence and the Buley Rockholes, and the weather is such that you really want to swim! So we decided to walk there, and were utterly amazed that we had the entire place to ourselves all day. I imagined all those other people braving the crowds… ah well!

The highlight of the walk were the enourmous golden orb spiders. We saw a few big ones, then ran into two that were just enormous, easily bigger than my hand.

Other than that, just a great day chilling out on top of Litchfield!

On top of the waterfall

In the rockpool

Kakadu and Litchfield without the camping

Posted on 6 September, 2014 by stuart

Did some serious kilometres with this one.

Had some friends from Queensland up, due to space in the car restrictions, we stayed in Jabiru for the night. We drove from Darwin to Maguk for a swim. We went to Ubirr for sunset, then to Jabiru to watch the mighty Kangaroos comeback against the evil Bombers. The next morning we went down to Bukbuluk, and spent most of the day in Gunlom. Afterwards we went to Ikoymarrwa, then onwards home. Stopped at Emerald Springs for dinner, it’s a pretty good roadhouse.

If you’re familiar with geography of Kakadu, you will see that we added about 300km needlessly by going back and forth, mostly because we wanted to see Ubirr at sunset, and stay in Jabiru. Next time I will stop at Ubirr on the way and stay at Cooinda. Much more sensible!

A few days later we went to Litchfield. Saw the usual spots – Florence, Wangi, Buley Rockpools in the termite mounds. But we spent most of the time in Tjaynera which was empty the majority of the time. Nothing better than an empty waterhole!

Went back to Mindle markets on that Thursday, there were some dolphins playing in the water at sunset entertaining the crowd. Pretty hard to photograph, but I did my best!

Claire and I in Maguk

Claire at Ubir

The four of us at Gunlom

Dolphins playing in the water

Kakadu and Litchfield – in the wet

Posted on 25 January, 2014 by stuart

A lot of people say that Kakadu is great in the wet season, as long as you know where to go. We had heard that Motorcar falls was a good walk and a great spot to swim. I met the rest of the gang at the Cooinda on the Saturday and we headed down to Motorcar falls. The walk is amazing, it is was really great to see Kakadu like that. Can you say green? The rain was on and off but it was so warm that you didn’t mind. It was the greenest place I had ever seen.

We didn’t camp, partly due to the random storms that hit during the wet, partly due to us taking a lot of randoms in cars. Paid accommodation was just easier.

The walk brought us to the swimming home. It was a “okay to swim but be careful of crocs” type of swimming hole, but that combined with the insane currents from all the water made us all very cautious. It was a great spot. The walk back was worse… no cool refreshing swim on the end of that! We headed over to a house we rented in Litchfield at a caravan park, for the night, before going to Florence Falls the next day. I had been to Florence falls a few times but it was good to see it with the water belting over. It was crowded, even though it was a Monday, it always is. We tried to head over to Wangi after that but a storm came over and suddenly it was thundering down, so we headed home.