Litchfield National Park
Waterfalls and plunge pools you can actually swim in, ninety minutes out.
Duration
7 hrs – 9 hrs
Best time
Dry season, May to September
Open
Every day
Entry price
Free
Litchfield is where the people of Darwin go swimming, for a simple reason: its plunge pools are fed by waterfalls dropping from a sandstone plateau upstream, which puts them out of reach of saltwater crocodiles. Kakadu, larger and better known, is not.
Florence Falls, Wangi Falls and Buley Rockhole are the main three, all an hour and a half from Darwin. The park also holds magnetic termite mounds: flat structures two metres high, all aligned north-south, which minimises the surface exposed to the midday sun.
Getting there
A hundred and twenty kilometres south of Darwin, an hour and a half by road. Car or an organised day trip.
What to bring
- Board
Rules on site
Only swim in plunge pools that are explicitly open, and check the signs on the day: rangers close them after floods, when a crocodile may have come upstream. In the wet season most are closed and the tracks cut.
