Litchfield National Park (Nicholas)

Florence Falls

In Ryan’s opinion Litchfield was probably the best place we had been so far and the rest of us really enjoyed it. Litchfield is a National Park near Darwin that has rivers and waterfalls, rock holes and spectacular scenery.

Plunge Pool at Florence

The sun was out and it’s a long weekend so all the rock holes that we went to were packed with people that were taking full advantage of the dry season and the “Picnic Day” public holiday. The first “plunge pool” that we went to was at Florence Falls and was spectacular. The pool itself was really deep and you could not touch the bottom near the water fall. The cliffs around the rock hole were about 15 meters high and some plants were valiantly clinging to the near vertical cliffs. At the time that we were there, there was also a group of 18 – 21 year olds that were jumping off the cliffs and into the deep water. This was very entertaining to watch but also very silly since there are submerged rocks and landing on one of them will do some serious damage to your body. Then the ranger came and got annoyed with them because of what they were doing, but they were talking back to her so she left and called the cops on them while another ranger made sure that they didn’t leave.

Buley Rock Holes

The rock hole we went to is called Buley rock holes. This was my favourite place of the day because while the rock holes were smaller than the plunge pool, there is several of them and most of them where too deep to get to the bottom of. The one that we spent most of our time in was probably the third biggest and about 5 meters deep. Being the stubborn fool that I am, I persisted and finally got to the bottom after diving off a rock and swimming down. These rock holes were fun because we were allowed to jump off the surrounding rocks because the rock faces were sheer all the way to the bottom of the pools. The third place we went to was Wangi Falls and was also full of tourists. Getting in there was very cold but once we got moving it was warmer. On rock face there was a warm pool with water flowing directly into it from a fall, and then out the other side. That made it like a deep and warm spa.

The final place we visited was Walkers Creek. We walked up a fair way and then decided to swim back down the creek. It was an adventure, but really painful. The sharp rocks, shallow water and continuous small waterfalls made it really hard to get through without hurting yourself. We ended up with lots of cuts and scratches. I got sun-burnt on my back! Eventually we made our way back to Darwin a bit sore, but having had some awesome experiences!