Our first
full day at Litchfield National Park today and we were off to explore all the waterfalls. Our first stop was Tolmer Falls. We wanted to get this one done early, as it
was the only falls you couldn’t swim at. We figured it was best to get this
walk done before the heat of the day set in.
At least with the other places we were going, we could cool off after a
walk with a nice swim.
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| Out on the lookout at Tolmer Falls |
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| Tolmer Falls - Litchfield National Park NT |
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| Taking photos of the Gorge - love that my shadow is in the photo... |
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| Why you can no longer go down into Tolmer Gorge and swim... |
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| Steve standing on the lookout platform |
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| Some of the many flowers we saw at Litchfield.. |
Tolmer
Falls, was a pretty easy walk, it was about 500 metres until the first lookout
which gave you some amazing views of the countryside around but not actually of
the falls. You could certainly hear
them, but had to walk another 800 metres to the Falls lookout to actually see
the falls flowing. It was a very deep
gorge. The reason you can no longer swim
here is that it is a breeding ground to some very rare little bats.
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| Florence Falls - Litchfield National Park NT |
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| Florence Falls |
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| Ian heading down to the base of the falls |
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| Florence Falls is a great waterhole to swim in also. |
From Tolmer
Falls we headed another 14 kms down the road to explore Florence Falls. This was a beautiful area, very lush, and
very rainforest like. We did the walk
to the falls lookout, and then Ian and Steve decided to walk down to the base
of the falls. It was another km and had
a couple of hundred stairs to walk down to get to it. Kathy and I watched them from the top. The pool was in the shadows and it looked a
little too cold for us to venture in.
Apparently,
this pool has a hand rail and steps into it and was quite popular with more and
more folk arriving whilst the boys were down there. There were quite a lot of big black bream
fish swimming around in this water hole, and Steve managed to take some photos
of them.
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| Fish at Florence Falls |
From
Florence Falls we headed back to Buley Rock pools. These were very impressive and as it was mid-morning
and really starting to heat up, we decided to have a quick morning tea here and
then head in for a swim.
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| Buley Rockholes |
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| Time for morning tea |
The rock
pools are a series of rock pools that all cascade down into each other… We walked to the top rock pool first and then
just made out way down until we got to the bottom pool. We spent about 3 hours in the water. It was really hot today, 41degrees, which is
hotter than most of our summer days.
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| Upper rock pool at Buley Rockholes - Litchfield National Park - NT |
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| Ian and Kathy cooling off |
The top
pools were easier to get in and out off.
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| Steve, Ian and Kathy in the top pools |
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| enjoying a refreshing dip on a stinking hot day... |
Even though the bottom pools were a lot deeper, that were was way of
getting in and out gracefully. I am glad I had a swim in them, but would
probably stick to the top pools in we went again.
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| Bottom Pools |
It was after
2pm before we finally got out and headed back to our van for a bite to
eat. It was so stinking hot though, that
we ended up heading back down to Wangi Falls by 4pm to just sit in the water
and keep cool.
We met some
really interesting folk from Western Australia, and got talking to them. They gave us quite a few helpful hints for
spending our time in WA, and we were still talking to them in the water at
6.30pm. It was after 7pm by the time we
got back to the van. Another relatively
late dinner. We were having a BBQ
tonight, so at least it wouldn’t take too long to cook.
It was still
stinking hot, and once again, the bugs were really bad, so were unable to spend
any time in the van with the lights on.
Another
early night for us.
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