Last night we realised that this coming weekend was the long weekend so instead of heading into Litchfield today, as we had planned - we decided to head for Edíth Falls just out of Katherine.
The original plan was to bypass Katherine on the way North and stay here exploring for a 5-7 days on our return journey - but the prospect of being at Litchfield - quite close to Darwin on a long weekend did not sit well - so Edíth Falls we headed for instead today.
We dropped into Katherine do a grocery shop first up.
This is a huge centre of about 18000 population and it seemed everyone travelling on the road at the moment was there in Woolies with us doing the same thing. They even provide a huge parking area off to the back of Woolies where travellers can park vans & even bigger rigs.
W stocked up on everything we needed - except wine. Bottle shop does not open until 2pm in these areas - so we would have to make our last bottle spin out for a few days.
Edíth Falls is only some 65km drive out from Katherine (42km N up the highway and then E about 20km) - all very accessible tarred road. Our luck held out and we secured the last Camper trailer site that day - phew thank god for that!!
This is a popular, great little campground - with lots of shade, hot showers and flushing toilets. All for $20/ night which is pretty good up here. It's NP but is privately run.
The main attraction here is the huge swimming hole - and falls 150m swim across the pool. So we were getting some pretty good excercise here swimming out and back to the falls (300m round swim).
This pool is so beautiful at sunset!'
Nice warning about the Crocs
- but a conversation with the ranger early one morning satisfied us that we were probably not endangering our lives too much. He said they are pretty sure that there are only a few "freshies" in here at the moment and they stay away up the creek a bit during the daylight hours.
Even better is walking to the Upper Pool - a round trip via the loop walk - of 2.6km. There are some spectacular views along this walk - and then you reach the prize - the Upper Pool - which is a magic swimming spot with the water not being too cold for comfort.
We walked up here our first morning and you can see the gorgeous spot we found!!
It was even better late afternoon coming onto sunset when we went back on our last day here. And we had our last magical swim here with very few others at this time of day.
Our 2 nights here stretched into 3 nights - it's just been nice stop after a week of driving and moving on every morning. We are relaxing and very much enjoying the swimming, the bird life and doing lots of reading. Even having 2x cups of tea at breakfast, lounging about and sleeping til 7am - luxury!!
Northern Rosella and Great Bowerbirds were are couple of the birds I managed to photograph. The bowerbirds hop around the groun most of the day - they almost bound along on two feet like a kangaroo.
And there were also lots of "Rosella" plants which I was eating raw when advised I could do so and here is a gorgeous flower we saw lots of.
And there were these amazing ants nests in the trees around the main pool. If you look hard you can see the ants crawling all over it.
We loved our stay here at Edíth Falls but on Monday (8th) we are planning to head to Litchfield NP - hoping the crowds will have thinned after the long weekend.
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