![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The flights I wanted weren't available, but my cousin was, and offered to take me out to Litchfield National Park and some of the waterfalls that I didn't get to see.
It was also his birthday, so it was a day away for him. And it was great to sit and chat and catch up about life, the universe, his family and everything. I'd had dinner with him and his family on Tuesday night and it was so good to make that connection - chat with his wife, tease his kids, talk about everything and nothing. Definitely going to keep that family relationship going.
Litchfield NP is about 90 minutes drive south of Darwin, and apparently it gets super-busy in the dry season (May-October) but because of the spitting rain and thunderstorms it was pretty quiet today.
We had to get back by 2:30 so we left around 8:30, did a bunch of sightseeing things on cousin J's advice, and then headed back up to Darwin:
Termite Mounds
There are two types of termite mounds - both of them pretty crazy tall and built over decades (so I understand): one is like the one in the pic above - 'cathedral' type mounds. And the other are thin flat mounds that are built along a north-south facing. They're grey rather than red, and a whole field of them look a bit like a cemetary full of gravestones!
Buley Pools
Buley Pools were a series of deep holes in a cascading river, with a couple of rocks you could jump off. I guess the photos J took of me jumping off the rock weren't great.
Florence Falls
Now this - this was awesome! There were about 150 metal steps to climb down (and therefore to climb back up, but there was a resting seat halfway up) but once we got there... There was nobody there, just us and the waterfalls. I swam out to a rock and sat there, we swam up to and actually under one of the falls - the rock where I was holding on had a spider web delicately strung under a ledge, beaded with mist. Absolutely beautiful, but I couldn't take a photo because it was on the other side of the pool.
We were there for at least 20 minutes, maybe 30 before other people turned up, and it was heaps of fun swimming around and trying to find the bottom (maybe 2m deep in the shallow end, didn't try up near the waterfalls). A thunderstorm rolled overhead in the middle of that half-hour, and I just swam around in the water and listened and loved being in the midst of crashing nature and the wildness. It was so good.
Drove back, stopped at Berry Springs pub for some pub grub (very good pub grub) and then back to Darwin.
Doesn't this photo just need a lightning strike right down the middle?
Anyway, heading back home today. Apparently we have five active cases in NSW today, 4 of which are community transmission with unknown origins. So, it's not great. Also, the flight I'm catching back to Sydney is full, so far as I can tell... Masking up for this one, definitely!
It was also his birthday, so it was a day away for him. And it was great to sit and chat and catch up about life, the universe, his family and everything. I'd had dinner with him and his family on Tuesday night and it was so good to make that connection - chat with his wife, tease his kids, talk about everything and nothing. Definitely going to keep that family relationship going.
Litchfield NP is about 90 minutes drive south of Darwin, and apparently it gets super-busy in the dry season (May-October) but because of the spitting rain and thunderstorms it was pretty quiet today.
We had to get back by 2:30 so we left around 8:30, did a bunch of sightseeing things on cousin J's advice, and then headed back up to Darwin:
Termite Mounds
There are two types of termite mounds - both of them pretty crazy tall and built over decades (so I understand): one is like the one in the pic above - 'cathedral' type mounds. And the other are thin flat mounds that are built along a north-south facing. They're grey rather than red, and a whole field of them look a bit like a cemetary full of gravestones!
Buley Pools
Buley Pools were a series of deep holes in a cascading river, with a couple of rocks you could jump off. I guess the photos J took of me jumping off the rock weren't great.
Florence Falls
Now this - this was awesome! There were about 150 metal steps to climb down (and therefore to climb back up, but there was a resting seat halfway up) but once we got there... There was nobody there, just us and the waterfalls. I swam out to a rock and sat there, we swam up to and actually under one of the falls - the rock where I was holding on had a spider web delicately strung under a ledge, beaded with mist. Absolutely beautiful, but I couldn't take a photo because it was on the other side of the pool.
We were there for at least 20 minutes, maybe 30 before other people turned up, and it was heaps of fun swimming around and trying to find the bottom (maybe 2m deep in the shallow end, didn't try up near the waterfalls). A thunderstorm rolled overhead in the middle of that half-hour, and I just swam around in the water and listened and loved being in the midst of crashing nature and the wildness. It was so good.
Drove back, stopped at Berry Springs pub for some pub grub (very good pub grub) and then back to Darwin.
Doesn't this photo just need a lightning strike right down the middle?
Anyway, heading back home today. Apparently we have five active cases in NSW today, 4 of which are community transmission with unknown origins. So, it's not great. Also, the flight I'm catching back to Sydney is full, so far as I can tell... Masking up for this one, definitely!
Tags:
no subject
Though being here in the US, these dispatches from sort-of normal Australian life kind of feel like bulletins from an alternate universe, precisely because there _are_ a lot of similarities between our countries...
no subject
no subject