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We drove from Katherine intending to stay at the park we stayed at last time at Coomalie Creek. We drove through Adelaide River and then onto the park, however, when we arrived there was a sign on the fence to say the park was closed. I walked in to check and in the meantime someone drove in and was talking to Robb. It turned out they were the cousins of the owner and they were staying at the park. They offered to go and check to see if we could get a site considering we had stayed here previously but unfortunately they no long had insurance on the park and did not want to take paying customers. Fair enough we could understand that, we asked if they had any recommendations for a park and they suggested we tried Batchelor Caravan park. Our concern was it was a long weekend and there are so many vans on the road we weren't sure we would find somewhere to stay. We drove to Batchelor Caravan Park and luckily we were given a great shaded site down the back of the park. The site was so good we were glad we hadn't been able to get a spot at Coomalie Creek. It was getting later in the afternoon so we set up and had a late lunch before driving into Batchelor for a look around, we had been here previously but it is always good to ground yourself when you go anywhere. We picked up a few items at the Batchelor General Store before driving back home. When we returned I put a load of washing on and made up a mayonnaise and a lasagne for dinner. It was getting later so I had a shower and washed my hair before sitting down to catch up on my blog. This is the best internet we have had since Elliott and I had lots of photos to catch up on so I spent the rest of the day doing this and catching up on missed epsidoes of The Living Room and Masterchef. We walked over to the office at 5.45pm to watch the feeding of the birds, there weren't a lot of birds to come in but there were a couple of Blue Faced Honeyeaters which we had never seen before so that was interesting. We are always really tired on moving days so I wasn't late going to bed for a read.
We had an excellent day today exploring Adelaide River and Litchfield National Park. We started off in Adelaide River where there was a very small market in progress, we walked along looking at the various stalls and came away with chili jam, a date loaf, one dozen eggs and some itch spray that we are praying works because it was quite expensive. From here we drove down to take a look at the War Cemetery which is impressive and well maintained. We had a bit of a look up the main street of Adelaide River before moving onto Litchfield National Park. We stopped off on the way for a bit of a walk around Rum Jungle Lake, this lake is in an old mining area and is quite big but there wasn't a terrible lot more to see here. We drove into Litchfield National Park and our first stop was at the Cathedral termite mounds, these are huge and we spent a bit of time watching some ants going about their business, trying to work out where all the entries were to the mounds, the ants are so tiny and the mounds are around 5-6 metres high. Our next stop was at Buley Rockhole a very popular swimming hole below a waterfall, we didn't swim here as there were too many people around but it did look very inviting. Our last stop before returning to camp was Florence Falls, once again there were too many people here to walk down to the swimming hole so we satisfied ourselves with a walk to the lookout that looks right over to the falls and down to the swimming hole. It is getting well into the afternoon now so we returned to the van for lunch. We are in a very shady spot so we sat outside for the rest of the afternoon enjoying watching the comings and goings of the camp.
How quickly the time goes when you are having fun, here we are on our last day at Batchelor, tomorrow we will be moving onto Darwin where we will be staying for at least two weeks. Today we thought we would explore the areas around Litchfield National Park that we didn't get to yesterday. Our first stop is Tabletop Swamp, we parked and walked over to the swamp and then I started to freak myself out by thinking there was a possibility that there could be crocs in there and here we were out here by ourselves. I turned around and walked, quickly, back to the car making sure Robb was behind me so that any crocs around would get him first. Safely back in the car and our next stop is Tolmer falls. These falls are huge, there isn't any swimming here we walked down to first one lookout and then the other and were suitably impressed by the size of the falls. Our next and last stop was at Wangi Falls where we had intended to swim but unfortunately the swimming hole was closed off because of a croc sighting, these are our favourite falls in Litchfield and it was such a shame not to be able to swim here but crocs are territorial so once they settle into an area they don't move far away from it. We drove up higher to Litchfield Safari Camp where we thought we might have lunch but unfortunately the cafe is not open at the moment so back in the car driving back towards Batchelor. We stopped for lunch at the Litchfield Motel at Lil' Ripper restaurant. After lunch we drove back to camp where we waited for lunch to go down before walking over to the pool for a swim (float). We were the only ones in the pool when we arrived but it wasn't long until more people came in to join us and we spent an enjoyable hour there chatting to the other guests.
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