​May 12 2017 - Katherine and northward

We watched this Great Bower bird building his bower and
courting his lady - or 2! Favourite colour white shiny, glass,
clear plastic, and small touches of green and foil. Fascinating!

Almost crushed under foot, these pretty little things
were clinging tight to a blade of grass - and to each other.
It made me wonder what other amazing things I have missed. 

We stayed 4 days in Katherine hanging out and getting our land legs back - car travel can be a bit tiring. Poor us! We'd travelled ~1200 k in a few days with not much break. So it was good to take the weight off a certain part! But then it was time to continue north.
We took a short 70k detour off The Stuart, the 'scenic route', from Hayes Creek to Adelaide River (the township) through part of the Douglas-Daly region. It was worth it!

Silent pools except for a little quiet chuckling
in the background,

I've not seen a lot of fungus but here I stumbled
upon a tree of little shelf fungi n a dying tree - one
the termites hadn't discovered.

Dark silent creeks surrounded by lush pandanus, reeds and grasses a few metres high. We took a side trip off that route down a rough creek-bed type track to see Robin Falls in the George creek; a gorgeous babbling stream with mini rapids and tiny fish. But after bumping our way a couple of Ks over rocks and deep holes we decided it was getting a bit narrow and challenging for the van, valiant through she is. So we found a place to turn around - quite a feat in itself! and headed back to the detour route - I you get the picture there? Roads off roads and tracks off roads ... oh dear! But we didn't get lost.
As promised, the scenic drive presented an ever changing canvas with trees and grasses of so many varieties - Bloodwood and large-leaved cabbage gum and ...... The area looks like mining territory to me and indeed we saw lots of locked gates across well graded dirt roads going up into the hills as we drove.

Wangi Falls was quite spectacular in the late afternoon.
We spotted a croc cruising the pool.

Litchfield nation park was our destination that day and we arrived in the park with 3 or so hours before sundown. Enough time to check out some of the major spots. Wangi Falls was magnificent but the deep pool at the base of the falls was off limits as so many water holes still are up here. They haven't cleared all the 'salties' from those spots yet and even then it is designated swimming holes only. This little black duck will enjoy it all from the banks thanks very much!! We saw a croc at those falls - not sure if it was a fresh water or saltie, but I think it may have been the latter.

Distance and depth take away the awesome height of the
Tolbert falls. If you look carefully you may see
a series of caverns along the river feeding the falls

The late afternoon sun captured the glorious colour
of these sandstone and quartz cliffs

Tolbert Falls was quite fascinating. A deep deep gorge carved out of the sandstone and quartz of the Tabletop Range along rock fractures by water dissolving soluable rock. Great sink holes and chambers - a bit like we saw in Tassie - have been excavates as a result. The area is home to two endemic bat species which live in the eroded chambers. Lots to see in Litchfield including the Tabletop Swamp which Lindsay visited early the next morning in the hopes of seeing some birds. Unfortunately he didn't see much!
Then it was time to be off and back up the Stuart to Darwin!