20 March 2013 - Banyan Tree Caravan Park, Batchelor, Northern Territory

There is merit in living in a shack without walls in this climate, such as many do in the islands across the Pacific. Living in a caravan here at the Top at this time of the year is a kind of torture unless you shut all the windows tightly and live with the roar of the airconditioner. The alternative is to sit out under the awning and suffer the biting insects. It takes less than five minutes to be entirely bathed in perspiration and have sodden wet clothes, after showering and changing into fresh garments. This all reminds me of my mother when she came to visit me in Vanuatu nearly thirty five years ago and labelled that Pacific Paradise a Hell Hole. She was then younger than I am now but alas, less tolerant of the climatic conditions. I do my very best not to complain, restricting negativity to this blog alone.

Ignorance of Australia, particularly of this part of the world, had me understand that Katherine, Mataranka and Darwin were all within a few kilometres of each other. Distances here are mind boggling as I keep discovering. We spotted a comment on one of the billboards about the Stuart Highway, that Katherine was the first permanent running water encountered by those travelling north from Port Augusta in South Australia; a distance of 2,720 kilometres.

Last week I mentioned that Renner Springs was considered the edge of the tropical north, but added that our own impression was that Elliot seemed more so. The distances from that settlement have been huge: 306 kilomteres on to Mataranka, 112 kilometres further to Katherine, 91 kilometres further to Pine Creek and 112 kilometres through to the turnoff to Batchelor just north of Adelaide River. We still have a further 114 before we reach Darwin and this we will cover tomorrow. And to save you the mental arithmetic, that distance from Elliot to Darwin is 735 kilometres, a significant distance.

This morning the storms of last evening were long gone and the day dawned fine and hot. We headed off into the Litchfield National Park as soon as I had packed a picnic lunch; we were keen to enjoy the cooler part of the day.

Magnetic Termite Mound

The Litchfield National Park is a relatively new park, the land was acquired in 1985 by the Northern Territory Government. The area covers about 1500 square kilometres of the Tabletop Range and was named after Frederick Henry Litchfield who was a member of the 1864 Finniss Expedition surveying northern Australia. Waterfalls are the main attraction in the park and we selected three for our exploration today, all of which find their way into the Finniss River and on out to the Timor Sea. The reality was that many of the tracks and trails  were closed because of flooding and crocodiles, so our exploration was limited.

But our first stop was at the Magnetic Termite Mounds twenty three kilometres into the park. In our travels we have seen towering termite nests and a multitude of smaller and strangely shaped ones. Here in Litchfield two kinds are on show; those built by the Magnetic Termites and the Cathedral Termites. The former build their gigantic mounds up to a couple of metres in height and always in a north south orientation to control temperature.

Both Chris and I were highly amused to read a report made to The Brisbane Courier in February 1906 by Randolph Bedford , one of the first European explorers trekking overland through the Top End, astounded when confronted with the extraordinary structures of the magnetic termite.

He wrote:

“The meridianal ant-hills of the Territory are evidently constructed so that their larger surfaces shall present the least possible area to the sun, and reach the height of 18ft. On the sparsely grassed flats they favour, and seen through the avenues of miserable and stunted gums, they consitute a new depressant to the outlook”.

Oh dear!

I lined up beside one of the cathedral structures, about five metres high and probably fifty years old and Chris took my photo. I now have a “me and termite castle” photo in Litchfeild and another taken in August 2011 on the Cape York Peninsula. I wonder where the next will be taken?

Dwarfed by a Cathedral Termite Mound

From here we drove on to the Wangi Falls, two impressive falls cascading from a high escarpment into a large pool which is currently out of bounds to swimmers. We had hoped to walk up to the treetop viewing platform but that too was out of bounds, officially due to “reconstruction” however we suspect it may have something to do with the bats littering the trees adjacent to the pool. There is a bit of a scare currently going on here in Australia after a small boy died from a bat related virus. We could smell them through the mist generated from the waterfall.

We started back toward Batchelor and pulled into the Tolmer Falls. These too are spectacular, plunging over the escarpment down into a narrow canyon populated with palms, Ghost Bats, Northern Bent-wing Bats and Orange Leaf-nosed Bats. Needless to say access to the base of the falls is strictly forbidden, this time for conservation purposes. Instead we took an alternative route back to the car park, a rocky track around the top of the falls, up the creek and through a patch of cypress pines; hot work but a delightful walk. Walking is something we seem to have neglected of late.

Our next stop was the famous Florence Falls which draws bus loads of tourists. A coach load of Kontiki travellers were coming up from the base of the falls but soon left us to enjoy the peace and beauty of the falls by ourselves. Chris reckoned these were the loveliest falls we had visited and I have certainly dragged him many hundreds of kilometres over the last decade to see waterfalls. I was pleased to learn he was impressed by these, however for myself, while I would agree that they are indeed superb, I have seen at least half a dozen to equal them.

Interestingly I have been unable to learn the height of these falls which leads me to believe that they vary depending on the season and the weather so I shall simply say that they are all spectacular and well worth the detour off the Stuart Highway.

We drove back up the creek in search of a picnic spot. The official picnic area was a mess, still damaged from a recent flood so we found a grassy area in the Buley Rockhole camp, a lovely place that we should not have entered however none discovered our transgression and we left no trace of having been there. At the Buley Rockholes we joined a dozen or so others and swam in the beautiful rock hole at the base of a series of cascades. It really is the most delightful spot and I thoroughly enjoyed my swim in the refreshing river water.

Chris wanted to go back into Batchelor and check out the airfield where he had skydived with the Darwin Skydiving Club back in the early 1970s. Eureka! The field was still in the same place and looked almost unchanged. Such a relief after having hunted in vain for personal historical landmarks over the past week.

We picked up a local paper and checked out the Rum Jungle Lake and abandoned mine site on the way back. The lake is the rehabilitated mine pit of Rum Jungle and the abandoned mine site, all fenced in with Keep Out signs gave no further hint of its past.

Back at camp we spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing and reading, enjoying the fact that we are tonight the only campers in. Not good for business but very nice for us!