Tuesday 10th August - Litchfield National Park

We should have had morning baths in the pool at Surprise Creek Falls, a few hundred yards away from the campsite, but we'd already packed up and were ready to go when we walked down and found out how lovely it was.  We decided that there would be plenty of opportunity for a dip during the day as Litchfield National Park is all about the waterfalls.

Carrying on up the 4WD track necessitated a number of creek crossings, some of which were rather deeper than they looked, and the Land Rover door seals that fail to keep out dust also unsurprisingly failed to keep out water.  Luckily there was just minor wetting of the floor, no major flooding.  We also passed fields of massive termite mounds, including the largest we've seen which towered over the Land Rover.

The smaller and medium sized ones are aligned N-S in order to minimise their sun exposure, but as they get larger they widen out in all directions, presumably having enough mass to remain cool during the day.

Sandy Creek Falls was a proper waterfall,

unlike the small cascade at Surprise Creek, as was Tjaetaba Falls we visited after lunch,

but swimming would wait until Florence Falls at the end of the day when we'd overheated from all the walking.  In between, we stopped to look at the remains of the Blyth Homestead, an atmospheric building of timber and corrugated sheeting built in 1929 as an outstation to the main Stapleton Homestead 24km away.

The children used to mine tin from just behind the homestead as well as help with the cattle, but it was abandoned in the 1960s.

Anneís favourite attraction so far in Litchfield National Park was the so called Lost City, weathered sandstone blocks and pillars that resemble an abandoned city you might expect to find hidden deep in a south-east Asian jungle.

Very cool, as was our dip at Florence Falls in the late afternoon sun. SPOT