Monday morning, the road is mine. Not for long though. Barely 20 km out of town, I had to turn around because of a minor electrical problem. Despite being overwhelmed by customers, the guys at Traveller’s Auto Barn did a great job in finding and helping me solve the problem. So here we go one more time. Monday afternoon, the road is mine! First stop out of Darwin is nearby Litchfield National Parc. This wide plateau is made mostly of sandstone, and where water encountered softer rocks, it dug valleys, rockholes and created beautiful waterfalls. There are four of them tumbling down high cliffs. Basically you move from one to another and camp nearby.
If I hadn’t realised it yet, it is peak tourist season in the Top End, and a trip to Buley Rockhole was all it took to remind me. It looked like the community swimming pool during the summer school vacation: crowded. Nevertheless, I found a small opening and managed to take a refreshing dip in one small but empty hole. At Wangi fall, they even built stairs to get into the gorgeous pool supplied by two superb waterfalls in the background. And even if it does admit the odd saltie (saltwater crocodile or estuarine crocodile) once in a while, it still was full. All of this under surveillance of a ranger of course. But once the jaws of the croc are slammed shut, a ranger or not will not make much of a difference… Actually, this is all quite funny, because when you walk toward the pool, the first sign you come across is the crocodile warning. Please do NOT go in the water, there might be a crocodile. A little further, another sign tells you to be careful WHEN (!) you get in the water. Don’t jump from the rock and so on. And then, next to the pool, there’s a ranger watching people getting IN the water, while others are climbing the cliffs to jump from them. I found it all a bit contradictory.
