It’s great having the car handy and today we did a day trip to Litchfield National Park from our base in Darwin so Ruthie could go chasing waterfalls. First stop was Tolmer Falls with forever views over the plains and then Wangi Falls. We couldn’t swim here as a croc had been sighted after the wet season (the water level rises and lets them enter) so walked and coffeed instead.

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Onto the magnetic termite ant hills. Some are over 5 metres tall and more than 50 years old. These magnetic termites are clever enough to build the mound with the thin edges facing north-south and the flatter broader edges facing east-west. Wildlife use the crevices to shelter from bushfires. It was warm but the blazing sun was tempered by the gentle breeze through the trees.

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Onwards to Florence Falls and although we had 150 stairs to navigate down, it’s here where we had our most enjoyable swim to date. The plunge pool is surrounded by 2 big waterfalls. At first touch the water felt cold but that was soon forgotten. It was so refreshing! You had to swim hard to get under the waterfalls but recovery was easy as the current drifted you away from the cascading waterfalls. There was lots of shrieking from Ruthie while she was under those falls.

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Not far from here was the Buley Waterhole and this was a different experience again. This is a series of small cascades over the rocks into small pools. Just pick your area and you can float in the Rockpool or let the cascading water give you a free massage. At the end of the day we were well and truely water logged.

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Next we stopped at a Zebra rock display. The Zebra rock is one of the rarest rocks in the world now only mined minimally in the Northern Territory. The mine owners would rather leave it in the ground but to retain their mining license, they need to do minimal mining.

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The Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Learning is in the gateway to Litchfield. Only 14% of indigenous children in the NT attend school although this is 100% in Kakadu because of their bus system. The Batchelor Institute uses a both ways philosophy which combines the indigenous ways with some western ways for tertiary education. It allows the students entire family to move to the college and provides all services for the whole family. What a great initiative! On our way back to Darwin we stopped at the site of the disused Strauss Airfield, beside the Stuart Highway. It had been used for World War 2 Spitfires and Kittyhawks to land, refuel and be maintained.