Day 194 | a wild night at Buley Rockholes: the drunken boys next door clear fell their campsite

51 km | Heading west total: 8,453 km

The great joy of the Litchfield National Park is the potential for immersing yourself in it.

Well immersing yourself in the water of the many rockholes that are dotted through the park. Walker Creek had a series of small pools that set a standard: warm water, clear, and deep enough to just jump in. They don’t need to be particularly big, in fact the bigger pools generally lose a bit of intimacy.

Today was a day for testing some of them out. First there was Wangi Falls, the big tourist attraction here in Litchfield I surmise mainly because you don’t have to walk very far from the car park. People arrive by the busload. There were already about 100 cars in the car park. You can tell it’s not really my kind of place.

Next was the Tjaetaba Falls on Greenant Creek which are not popular at all, and not only because no one can pronounce the name. The walk there is about 3 km return which means that very few except for the hardy, and maybe the disorientated, head off up the creek. The pool at the top of the falls is one of my favourite from my trip. Quite small, about 8 m in diameter, but it is deep enough and I only had to share it with 2 bikinied French women. I could cope with that.

The last soak for the day was at the fabulous Buley Rockpools. These are more my style so the large numbers of people swimming there were bearable. There’s quite a few pools as well so it’s not totally over crowded. They are fed from a spring from water that seeps through the sandstone from the wet season deluge. The water must be about 25°C, not exactly refreshing but, unlike any New Zealand river, it’s easy to stay splashing in the water for an hour if you feel inclined.

I wandered down to the Florence Falls which were 5 km return trip but there were probably 300 people in the water down there.

Fabulous and beautiful but I prefer my own Buley Rockpool, or going back a bit now, the pools at the top of the Maguk waterfall in Kakadu.