We headed about an hour and a half south of Darwin this morning to Litchfield National Park for some gorge walks. Poor Skye being subjected to our Harry Potter obsession. First stop Florence Falls for a gentle 1km walk on cemented paths along a stream until we reached the falls. The plunge pool was pretty big and already packed with a tour group or three, some of whom were smoking which was pretty poor form. Cursing forgetting the noodle again it was mummy’s turn to swim Stu over to the falls. We had a handhold next to the falls and waited patiently for the photo opportunists to swim away before we hoisted Stu up. Thereafter the quality of the photos deteriorated as Skye and I tried to push each other up onto the ledge in turn, providing much entertainment for all and some photos Matt took that have since been deleted.
We had opted for the 50 million stairs walk out of the falls option, which, after our little stroll in, was a bit of a rude awakening.
Off to Wangi Wangi Falls at the other end of the National Park which are huge and very much a family picnic ground / swimming pool. Too much going on here for there to be any crocs about. We opted to walk up to the ‘treetop lookout’ which passed through some pretty cool rainforest floor scenery on the way, surrounded by bats overhead and our path rushed by a family of wild pigs in a hurry. Skye, Stu and I didn’t make the lookout once we ascertained it was to get to the ‘treetop’ level, not to lookout over the falls as we had thought. Too pooped and too many stairs in the heat so we trekked back down for a swim. Matt drew the short straw with the waterfall stakes as this pool was huge and took ages to swim Stuey across.
After lunch and the nicest iced coffees we’d ever had, we set off back into Darwin to hopefully purchase some fireworks. The first place we got to was sold out and we ended up at the music shop (as you do) to buy fireworks. Apparently inside every man is a little boy waiting to let off firecrackers so we walked out of there with one of the larger packs to smuggle back into NSW. Skye’s family will also be receiving a delivery of contraband the next time someone is driving out to Nyngan from Sydney. Excited with our purchase we got ready to head into the Mindle Sunset Markets, paid an enterprising young man who may or may not have been associated with the tennis club next door $20 to park our car in the club car park as the main car park already very full and a big wait to get out of once over. The markets were wonderful, already hot and packed by 5 when we got there. Boys very interested in the stockwhip stall, so mummy relented and they are very much looking forward to trying out their shared stockwhip as soon as possible. Not quite sure when that’s going to happen given our projected proximity to others over the next fortnight but we’ll see! Lil had a wrap braided into her hair and we met the loveliest lady who writes names on rice grains for luck and sells them as pendants. Was nice to look at some beautiful things that weren’t touristy souvenirs. Some air-force jets buzzed the beach twice, which, although scary the first time was pretty cool and as dusk set in, Darwinites started letting off their caches of fireworks- everywhere, on the beach, in the car park, off the roof... this is one special town! The real deal fireworks display kicked off on the beach and watching this, we wound up a massive day sipping lime & mint slushies. There wasn’t much heavy slumber overnight as Darwin had a lot of personal fireworks to let off well into the wee hours with a general smoke haze covering the stars and some orange glows in the distance each time I got up to go and splash some water on my face to cool down.