Litchfield

…is a National Park an hour south of Darwin ( yes we are heading south). It is a well known park for visitors to the NT and I think they were all here today. The car parks were so full people were parked all along the road. My thoughts of a quiet dip in a beautiful tropical pool, with waterfall, were dashed as I don’t tolerate crowds. I’m not complaining of the tourists as I am one of them but I don’t get much pleasure when there is no room to move. I think you need to get in early like we did at Bitter Springs thermal pool. When we couldn’t find a place to stop we drove back to the caravan. I have fond memories of my last visit so will just have to remember them. We could go in the morning but it’s a long drive back into the park all for a quick splash. There was only one pool open, the others must still have crocs in them from the wet season. They do a thorough clean up each season to make it safe ( good idea?).

Most of the park is rather uninteresting shrub. The rangers are doing controlled, cool burns as seen in the pictures. This is done on a regular basis to cut down the fuel so there are not huge bush fires endangering life and the trees.

There are a few types of termite mounds here. Large cathedral structures built on mainly dry land and the smaller magnetic mounds which are lined up to have less sunshine in the summer. They are quite thin where as the others are bulky. The magnetic ones are in swamp lands which get flooded in the wet season. 

After our trip to the National Park we thought we would go into Batchelor township for supplies and a cafe. Well, they must have known we were coming and fled town about 5 years ago, it was like a ghost town. Very sad looking place. This area is the site of Rum Jungle Uranium Mine. It was owned by the Government and uranium was exported to the UK and US in the Cold War. The place was supposedly rehabilitated at considerable cost as the rivers and soil were damaged severely. I just read a report about this as it was of interest as they believed it had been “successfully” rehabilitated. Unfortunately not and the last federal budget allocated money to do further work here. The $ amount wasn’t disclosed as it was confidential due to commercial negotiations. The writer believes it will be in the vicinity of half a billion dollars. They are concerned about the other mines which are just as destructive to the environment.