Today we continued our exploration of Litchfield Park, there was a guided tour of an old tin mine scheduled for 10 am so we headed up to the northern end of the park to a place called Bamboo Creek. Again it was a clear demonstration of how tough the conditions were and how hard people worked to scrape out a living. They started in 1928 just by picking the tin ore off the surrounding hills, by the forties when demand picked up they started digging into the hills to follow the tin ore vein and built a crusher to process the ore on site.
Bamboo Creek Tin ore crusher
Every wet season they were totally isolated in very primitive conditions and most of the miners died in their 40s and early 50s from silicosis.
From there we went to a place called Walkers Creek, aptly named because there were 7 campsites there and each campsite was suitable for 1 or 2 tents and they ranged from 600 mtrs to 1.7 kms from the car park. You had to walk into your campsite carrying all you required.
Walkers Creek
We only checked the first site but it appeared that all campsites were at places where you could swim and the last one had what they call a plunge pool (a deep pool at the base of a waterfall).
The next place to check was the magnetic termites; all of their mounds are quite narrow and are aligned exactly north – south. They are only found in Australia and only live on the water logged black soils. Jacky thought they looked like grave stones. The largest mounds are made by the cathedral termites and their mounds grow over 5 mtrs.
Termite Mounds
It was getting pretty warm, certainly over 300C and it was time for a swim. The first place we called at was Buley Rockhole, the sign in the car park was certainly an indicator, it said “If the car park is full, then the rock pool is overcrowded, try somewhere else”. There were a few spaces in the car park so we had a look, another magic spot, the creek flows down over a series of stepped waterfalls and into a smallish pool that was 4-5 mtrs deep and crystal clear.
Buley Rockhole
It was a little crowded so we headed off to Florence Falls. It was pretty hot and despite the 135 steps down to the waterfall Jacky was not about to back out.
Florence falls – Litchfield NP
Plunge pool below Florence Falls
Again another beautiful deep pool below two waterfalls, it was rockier than the others and a little difficult to get in and out of but the water was beautiful. After we cooled off and took a few photos we headed back to Wangi Falls for another swim and then to camp for tea. I tell you its hard work being on holidays in a place like this.
Our neighbours at Litchfield
A couple of the locals checking out our tea
Our Travels 