To get to the Victoria Highway that takes you to WA, you have to head west from Katherine. Darwin is way more north than you think. The whole Kimberley is further south than Darwin. So back to Katherine we go – along with the entire travelling population. The Cars Towing Anything car park in Katherine is a sight to behold. So we joined the crowds of Nomads in their caravans/motorhomes/fifth wheelers and Europeans in their Britz/Apollo/Maui Campers and did our chores in “town” before heading for new frontiers in the west.
The landscape around Victoria Highway (you’ll note – nowhere near Victoria) soon changes to rugged cattle country, with extensive escarpments of red, craggy outcrops, well treed, but with little undergrowth.

We stopped just west of Victoria Downs Roadhouse to do a short walk and started chatting with some Nomads who had also stopped for lunch there. It was MY turn to meet someone we know. Turns out this lovely couple was from Torquay and used to be my customers at Torquay Pharmacy. Small world indeed. John has already run into people he knows: we saw two competitors from the Alice Springs event in Kakadu, and then he also ran into (and then had a morning MTB ride with) two other riders from the same race in Darwin one morning.
But back to the walk! It was at Joe’s Creek and took us right to the base of the escarpment. The view from there was like an amphitheatre of red rock surrounding the valley below where the wet season would see the Joe’s Creek run.
Here’s a great view looking through the palms:

 The palms above us constantly rustled in the breeze, and we kept looking behind thinking someone was there.

Leliyn (otherwise known as Edith Falls) is actually part of Nitmiluk (Katherine Gorge NP) even though it is some 40km to the north. We headed in there (20km east of the highway) towards the end of the day. There is a waterfall and pool that is safe to swim.
I promise this will be the last “falls and swim” photo (at least for a while) but it was a cool place to be at the end of a hot day. The pool was enormous – must have been the size of a footy field. The boys swam to the falls and jumped off the rocks more times than I remember.

The camping area was full as a fat lady’s sock, so we headed out for a bush camp. It was stupendous! There was a breeze, which means one beautiful thing to me: NO MOSQUITOES. My itching limbs are starting to give my fingernails a rest.
The moonrise was worth the photo – a whopping big full moon.

We arrived at Wangi Falls by about 9.30am. These falls are Litchfield’s most popular attraction, so it was good to beat the crowds. The falls run all year round, and the pool is huge!

You can see the boys swimming just below the falls in the photo above. And of course they had the obligatory shower:

And here’s one for mum – a photo with me in it!!

There’s a flash café serving coffee that’s not flash (4/10 again) and overpriced food. So we moved on.
We wanted to take a 4WD road (Reynolds Road) that heads south and exits Litchfield NP taking you down on the Daly River Road to save us backtracking to the Stuart Highway, but the road was closed, so backtrack it was.
John (famed for finding a short cut, albeit one that takes longer) did take us on an alternate route from the lovely town of Batchelor (formerly part of the Jungle Rum Uranium mining lease) to the town of Adelaide River.
Here, we visited the Adelaide River War Cemetery, the largest was cemetery in Australia. It has the graves of over 400 people who lost their lives during the bombing of the early 40s.

Litchfield has some beautiful waterfalls and swimming spots – all very (read way too) popular. We stopped at Florence Falls where cars had filled up all the parking spots for trailers, so we took the bus parking spot. This was not a good sign for a quite dip in the pools. Because then the bus arrived!

It’s only a short walk down to the pool in the pic above, and we swam over and got pummelled under the falls. There’s also a crazy guy in the photo jumping off the top of the falls.
Below is a not so crazy Harry (umm….) where we went swimming.

We moved on to Buley Rockhole just a few kilometres away, where the car park was also full. Another Bad Sign. It’s a series of cascading waterfalls connected to Florence Falls by a walking track through a monsoon forest.
Unfortunately it was super packed here:

Litchfield NP is only 90 minutes’ drive from Darwin, so it gets a lot of local day trippers. Add to that that is was a Sunday, and no school the next day, and you know you won’t be having a wilderness experience here.
The camping sites were all full, so we camped just outside the National Park. Unfortunately the mosquitos followed me there, and have made another well planned assault on me.

It doesn’t quite feel right camping in a city, so it was nice to hit the road and head to Litchfield National Park.
There are many bush fires around this time of year across the Top End, right through to the Kimberley. It’s a natural phenomenon, and regenerates the bush. You can often see the smoke in the distance, and it contributes to some beautiful sunsets. Today we saw a fire right next to us on the road entering Litchfield NP. But we also saw the Whistling Kites gathered en masse ready to feast on the wildlife scurrying out of the fire’s path. It was lunch time for them! Quite a spectacle.

We stopped to see the unique “magnetic” termite mounds that are only found here in the Northern Territory.
These termites, although blind, build their mounds aligned north-south, so that they always have one side in the shade. These are only found here, across these black soil plains. It’s a big contrast to the other mounds we have been seeing since somewhere near Tennant Creek that are built by Cathedral Termites.

They have just got bigger and bigger since then!