Australia, Litchfield: Magnetic Termite Mounds and Crocodile-free Swimming Holes

Tabletop Swamp was an interesting section of Litchfield National Park; we really liked the trees growing in the area
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A day trip to Litchfield National Park hadn't been planned before we arrived in Darwin during our six weeks in Australia. However, when we started reading about the sights and activities in the Darwin area, it was a must-do for our itinerary. Of course, we wouldn't have been able to have had such a good experience had Dan's friend, Carl, not been in Darwin at the same time and with a rental 4WD that he was able to give us a ride in, and we thank him for that. Some of the roads in the national park were dirt and gravel roads and the wet season had already begun, so manoeuvring through the park would have been a daunting task!

Florence Falls was an amazing section of the national park
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Throughout the day, we visited several waterfalls with swimming holes at their bases. Litchfield was unique in that part of Australia's Northern Territory because there were some swimming holes and rivers without crocodiles milling about. Even so, we didn't end up swimming even though the weather was hot and sunny during our first couple of hours in the national park. Later in the day, it started raining really hard, blowing any chance that we may have had of taking a dip, since we didn't fancy getting struck by lightning whilst in the water during a storm.

We did see way too many large orb spiders and a huge colony of bats hanging in the trees of the rainforest next to the falls

Wangi Falls was a really nice area of the national park to explore; there was a short path through the dense rainforest that we walked along
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To get to the national park, Carl drove us from Darwin. The drive was just over an hour and we first visited an area with many enormous magnetic termite mounds. The termite mounds (their nests) we saw in Litchfield were different to the ones that Dan and Carl had seen the day before in Kakadu National Park, not in size, but in type. Whilst the Kakadu mounds were more rounded in shape, the magnetic termite mounds of Litchfield were flat and horizontal. It is thought that there is a magnetic compass sense programmed into each termite, allowing it to sense a particular magnetic bearing, thus helping them create their mounds as we describe in the next paragraph.

We spotted many wild kangaroos at the side of the road during our drive around Litchfield National Park
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Magnetic termites construct plate-shaped mounds which are angled to catch the sun so as to create a stable temperature for most of the day on their eastern faces. Even though other termite species take refuge underground, magnetic termites cannot do that because the area of Australia that they live in often floods and the ground is too unstable for underground refuge. In the morning, magnetic termites move to the eastern faces of the mounds, which warm rapidly. By late morning, the faces of the mounds are comfortably warm and remain so for the rest of the day. The termites move back to the centre of their nests as temperatures cool in the evenings. We had no idea before visiting them that the mounds were constructed out of faeces and saliva!

The rainforest in Litchfield National Park was dense in many areas
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The next stop we made in the national park was at Buley Rockhole, where a few people were swimming in the cool water. There was a series of short waterfalls there with many pools to swim in. We took some photos and then Carl drove us to Florence Falls. There was a short walk to the base of the falls where a large pool filled with clear, cold water invited us to enter. We still didn't swim because we hadn't brought our swimming trunks from the car. Instead, we admired the beautiful scenery and then headed back to the vehicle to make our way to our next stop in the park.

Some of the termite mounds in Litchfield National Park were enormous
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At first, we thought that The Lost City was going to be some ancient Aboriginal village, but then we realised that they tended to live in smaller groups than larger societies and it made sense when we saw that The Lost City was actually a large group of tall, weather-eroded rocks whose formations resembles a city with many buildings of differing sizes. We walked around the area with Carl for half an hour or so and were the only people there. We assumed that other tourists in the area weren't keen on driving along the ten mile dirt track that led us to the city of rocks. During the drive along the dirt track, Carl zoomed through several large pools of water that had been formed in heavy rains the night before; that was fun!

We saw many creepy spiders like this one and were brave enough to get close photos of it
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Once we were back on the main road in the national park, we continued a few miles down the road to Tabletop Swamp, a large swampy area with unique trees and vegetation. We saw many birds, an understandable sighting with all of the water, but we didn't see any crocodiles. That part of Litchfield wasn't known to have crocs, or at least that's what we were led to believe. When Kyle walked a little ways into the swampy, muddy water (not even a few centimetres deep), he did have panicky thoughts about a crocodile attack as he took close-up photos of the swamp. After the swamp, we were driven to Tolmer Falls and it started raining, so Carl waited in the car whilst Kyle and Dan walked to see the enormous waterfall.

This caterpillar was unique
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The walk to Tolmer Falls took about ten minutes, but only because we ran most of the way. The path was slippery and it was good that we didn't slip and fall on the way to the viewpoint overlooking the waterfall. The waterfall was very impressive and we were glad to have walked to the viewpoint, but we ended up getting soaked. The weather was cool and a little warm, even with the rain, so we dried out quickly and weren't uncomfortable. Wangi Falls was the next stop we made.

When the rain had calmed down, we stopped at our last waterfall of the day. Wangi Falls was a double waterfall with a large pool at its base. There was a crocodile warning sign there because the area had had a recent crocodile sighting. We didn't see any crocs, but we did see way too many large orb spiders and a huge colony of bats hanging in the trees of the rainforest next to the falls. There was a path through the jungle and we walked along it to check out the rainforest. We continued to see many large spiders but that was about it. When we had arrived at the car park for the waterfalls, we saw a kookaburra and a couple of kangaroos.

On the path to Florence Falls, we passed a beautiful stream set in the rainforest
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The last stop we made before heading back to Darwin was at the Bamboo Creek Tin Mine, or at least what was left of it. A circular path ran around the ruins of the old tin mine and we saw a few interesting things there. On the ground were several small slivers of shiny rocks that felt like thick pieces of plastic and looked like a mirrored substance. There were some large birds in the area and we thought we might get lucky and see a snake in the area, but that didn't happen.

More kangaroos were at the side of the road when we started driving through the national park and back towards Darwin; we lots of them and usually in groups of three or four. Carl took a dirt and gravel road that cut out several miles of the journey, and it was a very quiet road so we saw many of the hopping marsupials then. Once back in Darwin, we went out for the evening at Tim's Surf 'N' Turf; the food was great - we tried crocodile for the first time - and dinner marked the start of a big night out for the three of us.