Litchfield to Darwin

From Lake Argyle we headed east into the Northern Territory to Katherine where we grabbed some meat, bread, milk etc. We then turned our attention north on the Stuart Highway and decided to stop not too far from where we’d be turning off the next day for Litchfield at the Emerald Springs roadhouse. The next morning we headed out early tuning towards Daly River to join up at the base of Litchfield on the Reynolds River 4WD track. We had fun going through a couple of river crossings before turning off to have a swim at Surprise Creek Falls, a series of cascading pools, surprisingly deep and satisfyingly cool in the heat of the day. We continued along the track passing some massive termite mounds, so tall that I was still dwarfed when standing on top of the ute. Continuing along we came to a more challenging river crossing which in retrospect we should have really filmed, the river itself wasn’t hard to cross but the soggy muddy escarpment on the northern side would challenge any vehicle without a bit of grunt. After Ben guided a car full of young ladies (I use that term broadly) up the muddy slope in their soccer mum style 4WD, we continued onto Sandy Creek Falls. It was a 2km walk into the falls and they were very beautiful although the pool was quite chilly. From there we finished the Reynolds river track and went down to the lost city, rocky stone pillars that have naturally eroded over time to form a skyscraper like landscape. We decided to go into Bachelor to have a beer and dinner before we headed for some free camping along the highway to Darwin.

We ended up staying pretty close to Darwin and we were in town early to check out the sights. Waiting over an hour at the caravan park to get a site we eventually got set up for a 5 night stay before going for another wander in town and catching up with Chocco, otherwise known as Darryl Whyte (Phill’s dad). Very generously Chocco offered us a place to stay for the remainder of our time in Darwin and we checked out the next morning. After catching up with Chocco we went into the Sunday night mindil beach markets for dinner.

Long story short we spent a relaxing 5 nights in Darwin sampling local fare and generally looking around.