Swimming holes the hard way
Driving north out of Australia’s empty interior, the arid desert’s red rocks and low bushes slowly phase into the sparse trees and tall grasses of the savannah woodland. Here in the Northern Territory’s Top End, well above the Tropic of Capricorn, winter is the dry season and temperatures still rise well into the 80s. Litchfield National Park is one of the region’s top attractions, providing locals and tourists alike with deep clear swimming holes and a welcome relief from the heat.
Florence Falls.
We were there to spend four days and three nights on the Tabletop Track, a 39-kilometer walking track through the park. For better or worse (worse) we didn’t know much about it, other than that it linked up numerous waterfalls along a rocky plateau. Though the parks service deems it mandatory to purchase and carry a detailed topographical map of the area, they are apparently only available in Darwin, which was well out of the way. We came prepared with this:
As you can see, the trail is ringed by a road that accesses nearly all the highlights, so most people simply pile into their car/campervan/tour bus and drive between them. Choosing to ignore this, we packed our bags and began with a refreshing dip at beautiful Florence Falls, which was well visited but not overwhelmingly so.
From there, our first afternoon was an easy 6 kilometers through pleasant landscapes, crossed by the occasional clear stream. Fields of stiff, straw-colored spear grass, taller than us in some places, clacked gently in the breeze and, true to its name, occasionally speared us in the shins.
Every once in a while a cloud of golden dragonflies would rise from the spear grass and surround us, fluttering gracefully. Butterflies, some sky blue and black and others rust-colored, floated in the slight breeze. It was nice. We reached camp around sunset, set up alongside a quiet but friendly Cairns native, and went to bed looking forward to more of the same.
On the second day, though, the Tabletop Track revealed its true, hateful character. Spear grass disappeared as we entered a former burn zone, and we trudged through more than 12 kilometers of flat, scorched terrain, sweltering under an unforgiving sun. Sparse, twisted trees offered nothing in the way of shade, and the ground was strewn with loose rocks, looking half melted from fires or the sun or both. It was a wasteland, much more suited for a landfill, or say, Hell, than a national park.
We'll spare you more pictures, but it was about seven hours of this.
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