1st January 2022, The morning after.. not a big night for us just a late one, what better way to recover than go for a swim at the waterfalls in Litchfield National Park. The park features a rugged landscape with rainforest edges, magnetic termite mounds, waterfalls and crystal clear plunge pools. Unfortunately, as we arrived during the wet season a couple of the prime waterfalls were closed due to flooding.

Our first stop was at NT’s famous cathedral Termite mound, reported to be the largest in NT but I have some doubts given this is a natural creation and relies on active termites, just my opinion. Looking out on the floodplains you can see many of these structures, their cathedral style is all about temperature control and many of them are two metres tall, taking years to complete.

Our first swimming location would be at Florence Falls, a small walk to the viewing platform before dropping down the steep 140~ steps taking us to the streamline, lets get excited. After all this exercise combined with the stinker of the day a nice cool refreshing natural fall was right in front of us, splash as I dove straight in only to be greeted with warm water, no chill factor like you would be expecting. The photos in the slide show give you an indication of how busy it was and some keen younger folk climbing up the rock faces to jump back in, taking me back to my younger days, the best we could do was swim across the fall current to a small ledge where Brianna, Emily and I sat looking back over the pool. Speaking to the ranger he did advise that it would be busier tomorrow once all the troublemakers got over NYE celebrations and head out here, sounds like we picked the right day.

What comes down must go up, the hike up the stairs soon made you wish you could jump back in the pool again, but the heat was temporary as we drove a short distance to the Buley Rockhole pools. With a series of small waterfalls and plunge pools along approx 800m (most I could see), we were fortunate where we arrived at the base of one of the two large plunge pools and we were soon back in the crystal clear water. A different experience here for sure as the Florence falls saw you constantly paddling to keep you afloat, here you could find a small rock ledge sit on it and relax – even against the water gushing down, a natural back massage. With so many smaller connecting pools this made for some entertaining observations, the rocks were slippery but some thought it would be good to glide over the top of the edges and fall into the next pool, however the particular pool we were in was not deep enough to where this could happen and one young chap so found out the hard way – the thing is, the water rushing down the stream had a fair amount of force, you could not stop yourself once you got into the rapid, you were on the natural ride. We also had a small visitor down by the last plunge pool – Merten’s Water Monitor, who soon jumped into the water himself to cause a little chaos with swimmers.

2nd January 2022, Darwins Oil Tunnels were built as a direct result of the Japanese air-raids back in 1942, which saw 7 of the 11 above ground oil tanks destroyed. It was then decided a bomb-proof option was needed, with the original concept capable of storing 20,000 tonnes of oil in 11 horseshoe-shaped tunnels, some with an internal width of 4.5 metres and 5.4m high. Peace was declared in 1945 and at this point in time only 6 tunnels were completed, noting that no oil was ever stored in them, however, Jet fuel was stored in a couple of the tunnels over a period, this was short-lived due to toxic odour and effectively shutdown.

After lunch, we returned to Darwins waterfront area and enjoyed a couple of hours in the wave pool before dining out at The Jetty – Steak and Seafood Buffet.

3rd January 2022, We had a very relaxed day today where we found ourselves back in the main mall only to be confronted with shops closed again – we forgot that today was observation day for New Years Day, everything closed. This still didn’t stop the girls from finding things to buy, more clothes. After a very late lunch, we experience our second monsoon storm, given our first one was when we were driving we really got to see how much rain falls during this event, let’s just say it is a bucket load.

4th January 2022, As our time in Darwin slowly winds down we had a couple of smaller things to do today, shopping, massages, scooters and high top views of Darwin. Let’s cut to the chase, we hired one of those crazy scooter things (each) and took it to the pavement along the foreshore of Darwin, was far better than the walk and safe to report that no stacks or injuries. All that speed in the heat meant we had earned a drink ;-0 and based on a good tip from the Tourism Office we headed of to the Ramada Zen Hotel where everyone is invited to the top deck bar, city line views, drinks and supplied canopies – win-win for everyone.

Images of our Day Out in Darwin, including Views

Scooter in the City (Darwin Style)

5th January 2022, It would be a holiday without some go-karting action, we had seen this place a couple of days ago and headed back today to tackle the track with the 39-degree heat. Belinda sat this one out as she is still nursing a sore lower back and took a couple of photos of the action, its safe to say that I am still on top of the leader board for 2022, breaking the minute with a busy track. The track was just under 900m in length with some tight downhill corners and long uphill straight that went into the last couple of bends, overall the track was not that smooth like we have experienced in other karting experiences, everyone had a great time and improved from the first session. FYI – if you watch the video and wondering about Kart 25 / 13 they had 15-minute session and we only had 10-minute sessions