Sun 17th August – Day 99: Litchfield National Park

Well we awoke this morning red eyed and grumpy – did we actually sleep at all? Unfortunately for us a neighbouring property ‘Woolaning’ was hosting the Isotopia (Information, Film, Music & Dance) festival this weekend. http://www.isotopiafestival.org/vision.php
BYO anything you like, don’t sleep and dance all weekend. The DJ (a local Batchelor boy) had a propensity for the heavy beat and extreme decibels. The ‘duff duff’ carried on through the night and showed no sign of letting up as we stumbled, blearily eyed into the sunlight. It seems the rest of the camp was also severely lacking sleep as the talk around the amenities block testified. Apparently it was to continue all day.
Rather than packing everything up, we decided to explore the park by car and come back late in the afternoon when everything wrapped up, or so we thought.
First up, Wangi Falls. Immediately we saw the error of stopping at the most popular and easily accessible location to the ‘Rave’. Bronzed, weaving, scantily clad youth were everywhere, all sporting the telltale green wristband of ‘Isotopia’. The falls themselves were quite beautiful, plunging down into a large shallow rock pool below (the Croc baits noticeably untouched). Huge numbers of fruit bats hung from the pandanas and palm trees surrounding the pool. We all had a quick dip in the crystal waters that was quite refreshing and cleared the head, but there were just too many people there – most of them either didn’t speak English or were too spaced out to make any sense. Pete approached a green banded swimmer who ended up being a German tourist, and when he asked him how loud the music must have been at the event as we could hear it as if it was coming from our stereo and it was emanating more that a kilometre away, he simply replied in his best Arni Swatch accent, ‘No problems man you just don’t go to sleep’. He then simply floated away waiting to be taken by aliens or what ever the substance he was on dictated.
We followed the winding bitumen back to Bluey’s Rockhole where a series of cascading waterfalls and rock holes kept us entertained most of the afternoon. Once again we ran across actor Gyton Grantley (who played ‘Carl Williams’ in Underbelly) with a bunch of mates soaking up the sun. They had also been at Berry Springs, 2 days ago. They were all sporting long hair and sideburns (apparently here filming ‘BALIBO’ which recreates events surrounding the shooting of five Australian journalists during Indonesia's invasion of East Timor in 1975).
Later that afternoon we took a quick trip up to Florence Falls, but the sun had zapped all our energies, so we admired the falls from the lookout and couldn’t muster up the drive to take the 138 steps down to the plunge pool.
Everyone was ready for a siesta so we started heading for home, only to be way laid when passing the sign to Blyth Homestead, built 1929. The 7km 4WD track took us over 2 water courses (60cm deep, so the Prado ploughed through) to the site where an early pioneer family toiled to get tin from the surrounding slopes. Litchfield’s 1500km2 area was only declared a National Park in 1986, before that it was a centre for tin and copper mining A photo-album with personal stories about family members showed just how hard life was for these pioneering families. Mac & Ada Sargent, had 14 children in 20years, and every one of them worked the mine from the time they were about 10.
Arriving back at camp just on sundown we were surprised to hear the ‘duff duff’ music continuing to create noise pollution. We reasoned being a Sunday they would wrap things up by the late afternoon, how wrong we were! Too late to move camps, I resorted to earplugs and sleeping tablets to drown out the thump. I think things finally ended around 4am, Oh to be young again!
Litchfield Safari Camp (unpowered $30/night)