20 Sep 10 – Litchfield National Park

By Lou: We boldly camped right next to Sam’s buddies at Wangi Falls campground in Litchfield National Park. Luke and Deb, and their gorgeous boys Jake, Harley, Indie and Taya hail from a brussel sprout farm in SA and were great company.












The numerous waterfalls accessible by bitumen were nice but overcrowded with tourists.









We headed off together on a 4WD track to Surprise Creek Falls and were rewarded with minimal traffic and lots of water crossings for the boys to be boys…and girls to record boys being boys.


















Our departure from Litchfield marked a temporary pause in our travel around Australia as we commenced a 3700km bee-line to Ipswich to prepare for our jaunt to Disneyland USA.

As mentioned in an earlier post, 4 years ago we committed to a 3-family expedition to Disneyland USA when young Luka regained good health. That time has arrived and I’m getting quite excited - not about Disneyland or spending quality time with best friends but about the luxury of living in an RV for a week!



By Craig: Certainly Litchfield was a better spot than Kakadu for family camping, great water holes, falls and 4wd-ing.



We were able to catch up with Luke and Deb who we had previously met in Darwin.



We decided to see some of the sights together and tracked out to Surprise Creek Falls. The boys loved crossing a few creeks (even the older ones) and we spent a great deal of time jumping off rock ledges and in general had a great time.














As we tracked about we visited an old homestead located near a disused mine. The displays and stories told of an era when children as young as 9 years old looked after sibblings and went to work in the mine. Ours boys were amazed that children had to work and had little time for play, a sign of the times I thought but I did remember Sam had chores to do, much to his disgust.








We often passed by large ant mounds and the more spectacular in type were the magnetic ant mounds. Almost flat with a razor tooth top they stood 2+ meters tall.








We all had a great time and as we parted ways we suggested our paths may cross again on the east coast, possibly Fraser Island (could be fun).