7 - 2024 - Nitmiluk National Park, Leliyn Edith Falls, N.T.

 

Entry 7 – 2024 – Nitmiluk National Park Leliyn-Edith Falls , NT

Arriving at Leliyn Edith Falls campground car park the first thing our eyes focused onto was the beautiful backdrop of the steep rocky walls alongside of the water falls pool. We were instantly in a sense of excitement with anticipation to experience a very special location.

We had already forgotten about the overflowing, super large day visitor car-park crowds we had negotiated our way through (alongside of the campground) when our eyes focused onto the surrounds of the falls.

The below photographs best show the Edith Falls setting taken the following evening as the sun was about to set, with the long weekend crowds gone.

We set up our camp for a planned extended stay, feeling buoyant to be once again, at Edith Falls. It is one of those extra special, delightful locations in Australia.

The campground consists of many circular shaped grass areas with camp sites spaced out alongside of the grassed areas.

As with most national park camp grounds, sites are predominately covered by shady trees. The site we managed to book, with some help from the adjoining road, provided good sunshine for our roof mounted solar panels as the arc of the sun travelled along this road.

Well, that was our last experience at this site. Since our last visit the nearby trees had grown much taller, greatly restricting our solar energy access. Thankfully we had recently acquired some portable solar panels to supplement our power needs at times like this. Foresight worked a treat for us on this occasion and we were able to obtain our required levels of solar power.

The atmosphere and scenery of Nitmiluk National Park - Leliyn Edith Falls area provides good incentive to push your bodies to “just do it,” and get out there for a look-about.

Our minds and eyes were saying, you need to experience as much as possible of this magnificent setting each day. But our legs and respiratory system were saying, “give us a go,” we’re not capable of supporting that sort of cardio-vascular work out. There was the hilly terrain with some steep, strenuous sections and so many steps.

So, we came up with a compromise. Every second day we walked the upper-falls loop walk, each time rotating our start/finish direction.

After a few loops, even our cardio-vascular system was showing some enthusiasm to be out and about in the fabulous setting.

During those periods of walking/hiking our bodies would look forward to the many recovery dips in the coolish waters of the upper pools along with the main, lower pool on the return hike.

We do love the magnetism of these locations. Consider the above photographs of us in the water together. They require a special act for accomplishment. First the camera is setup on a tripod, balanced on an uneven rocky surface on the water’s edge. Second, the model is positioned in the appropriate spot. The nearby pool is inspected for obstructions, especially for any submerged rock outcrops. Third, with the 10 second timer on the camera activated, Steve dives into the water, carefully, hoping not to splash water onto the camera lens and swims underwater as fast as he can. Fourth, he surfaces nearby Mary, orientating his position close to Mary and with an appropriate angle towards the camera. Fifth, he flicks the water off his face, trying not to look like a drowned rat and hay presto, a photograph of us both together with a magnificent backdrop.   

On the non-hiking days, we would swim out to the falls and enjoy some walk-about time nearby the main falls area viewing the “locals,” and admiring the beautiful setting.

The Nitmiluk National Park - Leliyn Edith Falls area is grand viewing. It oozes with charisma, providing a beautiful boost to one’s well-being. Thank you, mother nature.

 

6 - 2024 - Alice Springs to Katherine, NT

 

Entry 6 – 2024 – Alice Springs to Katherine, NT

We filled the tow tugs fuel tank, prior leaving Alice Springs. We were heading north and fuel prices were about 40-50% a litre dearer at the small service centres along our route. The next major town with a more reasonable fuel price was the town of Katherine, about 1,200 kilometres up the road.

Just north of Alice Springs the cloud formation changed. It looked like an endless rolling cloud band, similar to an ocean wave pattern. The only other time we could remember seeing a similar cloud pattern was close to the Australian northern coastline near the town of Karumba in Queensland.

Up the road a bit from Alice Springs is another “psychological point,” The “Tropic of Capricorn,” at Latitude 22-442028 and Longitude 133-833111, providing thoughts we are getting closer to the equator with the anticipation of warmer weather.

We shared the long-distance driving duties, regularly switching drivers.

There was a stop at the Alieron service centre.

You know when you are approaching the northern areas of Australia. The unique termite mounds start popping up on the landscape.

A stop at the Devils Marbles, (Karlu Karlu/Devils Marbles Conservation Reserve) where we walked one of the trails amongst its special boulders. Our bodies welcomed the hours exercise, stretching out, alleviating our aching, cramped body parts.

Normally during periods of “just driving,” the distance we cover in a day can vary considerably. There are the daily variables, our personal capabilities at the time, road and weather conditions can have an impact. The performance of the tow tug/caravan, another example from the two weeks previous, when we got horribly bogged enroute.

Northern Territory National Parks, provide a campground at Devils Marbles which we had frequented previously. This day we were travelling well and thought the Devils Marbles campground sounded good, within our distance’s capabilities for the night.

Previously, on arrival at the campground, we would find a spot to set camp and place our camping fee into a box. With the introduction of a new, computerised system, you were now required to book and pay in advance.

First, we were in need to find a service centre with phone/internet reception. Another scarce commodity when travelling in outback Australia. It was about 12.30 pm when we came across phone reception. After negotiating the not so user-friendly National Parks computer system we found all the allocated sites were booked for the night. During the rest of the week there were plenty of vacant sites at Devils Marbles.

On our circuit walk around the Devils Marbles we passed through the campground. It was approaching dusk and the campground still had about 15 unoccupied camp sites. Unfortunately, this was a common issue with the pre-booking system, (nightly, many vacant sites,) with the authorities seemingly unresponsive to ideas for a solution. Grrr, which sounds like the same Grrr expressed by many others.

At least there are many other special locations you can enjoy whilst camped for a night. Even when the overnight temperatures hover in the single digit degrees. It must be cold with the appearance of external condensation on our caravan’s outer skin displaying the placement of our internal support structure.

There was an opportunity to camp on a disused World War Two constructed aircraft runway. Just another unique special location.

We were travelling well, covering our daily minimum driving distances easily. We did have some good incentive, the warmer weather conditions, beckoning us, up the road a bit. We decided we could arrive at our target area with a couple of days to spare before attending our prebooked locations.

At about 8.30 am we arrived at the town of Mataranka where we jumped into the naturally occurring warm waters of a local spring fed pool. Ah, it felt good, soothing our weary bodies. An hour & half later with wrinkly body parts we extracted ourselves from the beautiful spring waters.

A few kilometres up the road was another warm water oasis, “Bitter Springs.” We drove into the nearby caravan park, obtaining a site for a couple of nights and spent more time in the Bitter Springs sensational waters.

From our caravan it was an easy near kilometre walk to where you can slide your body into the warm spring waters of Bitter Springs.

There is a nice, scenic walking trail through the caravan park, then along the paved road surface into Elsey National Park.

Upon arriving at Bitter Springs, there are some strategically placed platforms where you enter the warm flowing waters. Many people utilise foam noodles as a floatation device as we did and you gently move along a winding stream surrounded by a magnificent setting. After around a 15–20-minute duration in the water you exit the water and walk for about 2-3 minutes back to the starting point and do it all over again and again.

It was wonderful to be in our target area. The day time and night time temperatures had become quite palatable, much appreciated by our bodies.

Leaving Mataranka, we became aware it was a Monday public holiday. We had planned for a big shop up the road a bit at the good-sized town of Katherine.

Our previous experiences with public holidays showed most shops to be closed. We still needed to prop at Katherine (with fingers crossed) to see if this was still the case. Wow, we were pleased to find an open Woolworths food store. Adding to our pleasure, most shelves had stock available. Previous visits to this same store showed many empty shelves. Our arrival timing must have coincided with a recent delivery. Yippee. Though it was the busiest supermarket store we had ever experienced. People were jostling and acting crazy. Just the wait to get to a checkout was time consuming.

Our bill was near $250. Wow, oh wow. We did stock up with our food requirements for the next couple of weeks.

With the tow tugs fuel tank refilled we headed up the road to our next target location of Nitmiluk National Park where we set camp at Leliyn Edith Falls campground.