Shortly into our camper-van excursion, we arrived at Litchfield National Park in the Northern Territory. Although it was quite early in the morning, we were already feeling the heat, but we were excited to see what was in store for us in the park. On our way through the park entrance road we were pumped up by seeing a pair of Kangaroos (or wallabies… as we couldn’t quite tell) rip right in front of our camper-van and across the road.When we pulled off to the part of the park we were interested in seeing, we started off on a quick hike through the forest and saw a cute cuddly rock wallaby hiding on the rocks beside us.
Our first stop was Florence Falls. Not only was this a literal oasis surrounded by the arid desert of the Northern Territory, but it’s one of the only places in the Northern NT where the water isn’t infested with Crocs! Were we were more than happy to take a dip in pool at the base of the falls in order to cool down and beat the heat. Even more amazing was that the water itself had a distinctive sweet taste to it. Not that we were drinking it, however, just the bit of absorbed water on our lips smelled and tasted sweet. We wondered why.
Once we had dried ourselves and trekked back through the bit of forest that shrouded Florence Falls, we got back into bertha and headed off down the road toward our next stop “The Magnetic Termite Mounds of Litchfield National Park”.
We climbed out of Bertha and went over to the viewing area when suddenly Jono jumped back. He was visibly startled and terribly upset all at once. With the rest of us trying to figure out what had happened he shouted “I saw one! I saw one”. He was speaking about a 6 or 7 foot long bright orange coloured snake that had just darted off the path and into the long grass. Although he was excited to have seen it, he was equally as upset that he didn’t have his camera out and ready.
So we went over to the viewing platform and took some photos of the strange magnetic termite mounds which were a type of insect skyscraper towering at around 2 meters, however we were more impressed with the non-magnetic ones which were far larger around and at least 5 meters high!
All in all we had a quick but enjoyable visit to Litchfield National Park, but if we were ever going to make our camper-van delivery date, we had to get moving! So we all loaded back into Bertha (who wasn’t quite as sweet smelling as she had been a day or two ago), and we started off down the road into the heart of the dry and deserted land that is The Australian Outback.