Less than 2 hours from Darwin is Litchfield National Park. It is named after an explorer who ‘discovered’ the area and is said to be Kakadu’s cooler little sister. It had come so highly regarded and given how easy we took life in Darwin it we were glad that it was close by.

One thing we have noticed about parks in the top end is that information about the park and in particular the walks, is minimal. Walks are limited as I suppose the hot dry climate here could get a unprepared walker into trouble, so they don’t provide much information about them in an effort to discourage it. Often, we didn’t know where a walk was until we stumbled across its beginnings in a car park.  For our first walk in Litchfield we chose the ‘Magnetic Termite Mounds’. We had lunch before we set off and packed the backpack with water and a snack only to find that the walk was literally about 20 metres long!  Litterally. We were so disappointed.

Our next stop for the afternoon was a swimming hole, which ironically was ‘swimming’ with people! We could barely find a spot to get in the water as busloads of people enjoyed the chance to cool off. It seems that Litchfield has come highly recommended to many. Thankfully as the afternoon faded, the day-trippers left and we shared the pools with only a few who remained that were camping in the area.

Litchfield is characterized by its waterfalls. We found it best to start the day early and spent a wonderful morning having Florence Falls all to ourselves!

Litchfield’s waterfalls are spring fed so they flow all year round and do not have crocks. We found lovely swimming hole after lovely swimming hole throughout the park, however as Litchfield is mainly accessed by sealed road, everywhere was busy.

Within a day we had seen most of the park from the sealed road and had even done some walks. We decided to follow the 45km dirt road ‘Reynolds River Track’ to exit the park at the southern end. We were in for a big surprise! We assumed the road would be like the other ‘4wd tracks’ we had driven on in Kakadu, it wasn’t and driving this road turned out the be our Park highlight.

We found waterholes that weren’t crowded and ended up camping an extra night under the starry skies at a remote campsite. We passed dramatic landscapes of termite mounds that looked like giant grave yards and then there were the river crossings. The first few were fun. A bit deeper than we had done before but we were excited, held our breath and took it in our stride. Then we hit a sign saying that snorkels were recommended. We don’t have a snorkel but we didn’t want to turn around to cross over the rivers that we had already nervously crossed. We tried to walk across to judge the depth, but neither of us wanted to be hanging around in the rivers, which unlike Litchfield’s rock pools, were home to saltwater crocs!

Thankfully, we and the car managed it fine with a lot of bravery and a bit of grunt. It was a little scary and quite exciting at times and it really was the highlight of our time in the park. It was my first time ‘spotting’ (being the person outside the car giving directions to the driver) and quite frankly I sucked! We managed to drive right over a tree stump coming out of the Reynolds River. I just squatted down and put my head in my hands and kept saying ‘oh no’ as the underbody scraped along the stump. Rob yelled out ‘don’t just sit there with your eyes closed!’ and I had to snap out of it really quick. Don’t worry, Rob got me back crossing the Reynolds River for the second time (a bit further down the track) by driving off and leaving me stranded on a sand bank in the middle of the river. With a few laughs I made my way across to the car thanks to a handy fallen tree.