Hi family & friends 💕
150ks south of Darwin, we took the road to Litchfield National Park, our destination for camping with Jason & Ally. ✈🎉 It’s the middle of Northern Territory’s 4 week school holidays so our fingers were crossed we’d find a good spot. Driving in early, we passed a few vans heading in the opposite direction, so we were encouraged … & excited. The attraction of Wangi Falls campground is it’s small, the only camp in Litchfield that allows vans, they have showers, camp fires are permitted and… a cafe 🍔☕
Driving in we passed a turn-off to Rum Jungle. The name has nothing to do with any WW2 stories of soldiers going AWOL, which was my first thought, it actually dates back to a major accident in 1871. A bullock wagon, fully loaded with Rum, was on its way to the construction gang camps. Copper & tin mines plus pastoralists all required men for labour and those men all required Rum. The wagon got totally bogged in the croc filled East Finniss River … so the ‘bullockies’ untethered the oxen🐃… and began working their way through the precious cargo of Rum, apparently enjoying one of history’s most glorious binges. 🍻📃
We’ve learned not to continue past a good site looking for a better one, it’s our newest rule. Such a great rule.📋 The spot we scored at Wangi Falls was a good size and so lucky as the campers behind us, for sure, would have bagsed it. The next nearest camp ground with facilities was 45ks away, so we’d struck gold.
After the wet season ends, NT Rangers spend time clearing the swimming areas, trapping and relocating crocs. Wangi Falls was given the all clear and it was such a beautiful place to swim, we knew J&A would love it. Before we left to pick them up in Darwin, it was 32° so we strolled down for a late afternoon swim. Huh ? 🚧’Closed for animal protection purposes’ 🚧 The rumours spread fast, a small crocodile had been spotted by swimmers who, unbelievably, encircled it. Naturally, it felt threatened and a womans’ arm was injured as the croc tried to escape. How inconvenient !
The Rangers’ directorate is to spend 2 nights locating and capturing a croc, otherwise leave it be so after confessing to J&A next morning, ….
… we walked down to find the falls open. It was so hot and all 4 of us were keen, how blase is that … we had a fabulous swim .. easily able to ignore the fact a croc was in the water too.🏊🐊
Until now, there hasn’t been a travel guide published or entries into any Ripley’s Believe It Or Not editions that records the number of trips made by one family, in one holiday, between Lichfield NP and Darwin, a 260km round trip with half on dirt.
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Category 44: Incredible Journey Repetitions.⤵
A fearless young couple have travelled between Litchfield NP and Darwin in the Northern Territory of Australia’s wild outback, an incredible 7 times in one week. The cumulative distance totalled 1000km with their odometer spinning as fast as the fuel pump. A new tyre needed replacing after becoming a casualty of the incredibly dangerous off road conditions. This gutsy couple navigated crocodile infested creek crossings in the dark, suffered sleep deprivation, isolation and severe withdrawals as all modes of communications including ’emergency calls only’ were unavailable.
Would they do it all again ? ‘Yes’, they announced, ‘for the family xx’
7/7/15 Edition
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We dropped Ally & Jason off on our final trip to Darwin and then had a look around town. It’s well set out, easy to get around and the city seems divided into two compact areas. The backpackers and street side bars are on the high side while the waterfront precinct has a more modern style of dining and entertainment. It’s balmy and a pretty place to walk around and with the arrival of troops from America to play joint war games, Darwin was about to get pretty busy.⤵
On the 1st July you could buy fireworks across the entire state and combined with NT Day, Darwin had a huge event planned. Hopefully the US troops were forewarned or there may have been confusion and possibly… return fire. One shop assistant described her fireworks night injury, a nasty sparkler burn. Do you remember those days ? It was always so cold on fireworks night, the Katherine Wheel at mums didn’t explode as anticipated after it had finished spinning, so we waited a suitable amount of time before checking it …. then suddenly 💥 So fun. Remember the packets of throw downs, little round things like mini targets, Tom Thumbs? I remember standing on our driveway holding a ball shooter, pointing it at the house opposite, geez, so dangerous. Anyway, NT still does cracker night 💥🌟
John and I checked out Darwin’s Museum/Art Gallery, not far from the CBD.
Actually, I remember she went on about how everything was bigger and better in Darwin. Of course, she would have been so homesick and isolated in NSW but now that I’ve been there, she was right. The mosquito’s, ants and flies are absolutely huge 🐝🐜
🚩 Half time Stats:
- Distance travelled: 18,063 km’s 🚗🚎
- Fuel cost: $3,975.00 💰
- Fuel used: 2763 litres ⛽
- Fuel consumption: Average 15.29 litres per 100 km
- Av price per litre: $1.43.8
- Power: 100% Solar 🌞
- Electricity accessed: Zero 🔌
Miscellaneous:
- Whistling Kites are raptors, look like wedgetail Eagles, often circle above in freaky groups of 40, they’re like the seagulls of the outback.
- You can’t buy DVD seasons in Katherine.
- Two Policemen guard the Katherine Bottle shop, there are purchasing restrictions, you have to produce ID and they ask you to verbally confirm you are not going to drink in the streets. 🐦
- The main international visitors in NT are Germans and French. We were sitting in the middle of no-where by the fire one night with only a tealight candle alight in the van, when a huge rent-a-winnebago parked near us. The french family of four had all their lights blazing for hours, next morning he came over to say ‘Pardon Mademoiselle, Unroyable , le batterie eez dead ! We had leads but couldn’t manouevre the caravan to where his engine was, so John approached the only other car there (within a 20km radius) Voila ! also French and happy to help. We watched him pack his tent away, drive up to take John our leads then watched him drive off … thankfully, turning in to help them.
⛺
It was so amazing spending time camping together, Ally & Jason, thank you for coming all that way to see us and better luck next time guys, in challenging us to your boardgame … Settlers of Catan. xxx
Casey … we were all wishing you could be there too, stay safe 💑
Love to our lovely mums and thinking of everyone ✋
John & Shirl xx
intothewild2015 
Litchfield is a beautiful national park.We were there in the wet season fringe but luckily for us it was a little late in its full belt start.We did see some spectacular storms tho at Litchfield and Kakadu. Crocs.Crocs were always on my mind especially after our Kakadu experience. Such a magnificent adventure you are having. Can imagine your excitement to have Ally and Jason visit. xx
Hi KA, it was really special having them both to stay, so fun xx
Seeing a ‘wet’ storm would have been exciting, I’d like to see that one day, especially since having learned the rains are not 24/7 and still possible to get around the main areas. ✋