Back to Darwin, and onwards

As mentioned, last night's gunshots were rangers shooting at a crocodile. But apparently they missed - Wangi Falls was still closed in the morning. Though we did do a nice little walk around the side of the walls through the treetop forest, looking at the birds and various plants. Briefly considered the hike to the top but apparently you can't see the falls or the pool from the top which seems to rather defeat the point in my opinion!

Back to the van and onwards. We decided to check out a little place still in Litchfield NP near Florence Falls that we'd seen yesterday, called Buley Rockhole. And it was a great decision, as the rockhole was absolutely beautiful. It was a series of small-ish pools and little waterfalls cascading into a creek about 200m in length. The water was super clear and pretty warm too, and very clean. No threat of crocodiles either since it's upstream from Florence Falls. Crocs can do a lot of things, but they can't climb waterfalls (yet).

We spent quite a bit of time here, relaxing in the various pools and taking silly GoPro videos. Such a great little find, and still very unusual to me who's grown up in a coastal city with amazing beaches - swimming in fresh water is a novel concept sometimes. You don't emerge stinking of chlorine or covered in salt, which is a strange feeling!

Back to the van for our last stop - about an hour northwards at Berry Springs. Similar to the Rockhole we'd visited earlier, this was a long creek with big plunge pools where the water was super clear and clean. Amusingly enough, there were signs saying the water is only infrequently monitored and can cause ear infections and gastro, and that swimming was not recommended. But then there's permanent swimming infrastructure built there - concreted pool surrounds, ladders and so on. Quite a few more people here so we had a nice swim but didn't stay for too long. One of the pools had a rope swing above it which I had a go on while a French backpacker filmed me - I'm hopeless as I don't have the upper body strength!

Finally back to the car for the last leg of our journey. About another hour of driving and we arrived back at the depot in Darwin (after a brief stop to empty the septic tank - yuck), 30 minutes ahead of schedule. Cleaned out and farewelled the car, and then suddenly we were at the airport by 4pm for a 9pm flight! We sat around in a cafe for quite a while using the wifi; although our motorhome had a GPS device that could provide wifi, we'd been out of mobile reception for most of the trip and had a lot of internet catching-up-on to do!

Salubrious dinner in Hungry Jacks, then a lovely discussion with a BORDER FORCE agent who crossly told me that if I wanted to claim the GST refund then I could fill in that form right there, and no I don't have a pen you can borrow, and you better fill in that form properly sonny or else you won't get any money back and no I'm not going to check it before you put it in the box. What a prick.

The flight left Darwin a little late, but no matter. I watched the lights of my homeland slip away, knowing that I wouldn't be back for quite a while. But a whole new continent was beckoning!

Our travel odyssey continues, check out the next trip for details!Read more