Category Archives: Swimming

Kakadu Trip for Easter

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I wasn’t able to get home to Paradise Valley for my normal Easter Trip, so Claire and I decided to go away for the night and booked into Cooinda. On the way down we stopped at Ubirr. It was interesting to see it with a lot of water, it was extremely green. We also got to do a small creek crossing, just 40mm over a road.

We stopped at a few of the culverts and I had a flick. It was the middle of the day so I wasn’t very hopeful that we would get anything and we didn’t. But it was still good fun. In the afternoon friends of ours arrived (Renee and Mick) with their boat. We fished yellow water for about an hour and half, didn’t get a lot of barra, but got some a few tarpon, Claire was very impressed and took this photo:

I guess the other interesting thing was the sheer amount of dragonflies that were mating each other. Everywhere. All over the boat, a few landed on my rod and just started going at it. Good on them I guess. Had a few beers in the evening. Saw the eclipse or “Blood Moon” which looked great.

On Sunday we drove the full look and went to Ikoymarrwa for a swim. I was amazed about how cold it was, despite the opressive heat! Also only a few groups stopped off, the majority of the time it was empty, this being the only swimmable water hole in Kakadu on Easter Sunday. It just goes to show how much more you can get of things with a bit of research.

Greenant Creek – Litchfield

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Greenant creek is location in litchfield, a 1.6km walk will take you to a nice waterfall and a viewing platform.  You can’t get into the water there or anywhere downstream from it, as it is a sacred site for the traditional owners, however, you can swim* at a really nice rockpool right above it. I have been told it is best in wet season, these pictures are from February 2015, and it was a Saturday and we had the rockpool all to ourselves.

* it isn’t a zoned swimming site but the rangers “are aware people swim there and we don’t mind. Be careful of flash flooding as you are right above a waterfall”

 

Greenant day trip in the wet season

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Much of my memorable adventures start with reading the Kakadu or Litchfield access report, find a place and calling the rangers up and asking about it. In this case I called the Litchfield rangers to ask about swimming at greenant creek. A quick google search said there was a rockpool you could swim at, the access report said the track was open, but didn’t mention anything about the swimming. What followed was a hilarious conversation with a helpful ranger handicapped by the world we live in. Basically he said:

“there isn’t anywhere that is zoned for swimming there, so I can’t tell you you can swim there. But there is a rockpool above the waterfall that people swim, I swim, and we don’t mind. You don’t have to worry about crocs but you do have to worry about flash flooding, since you’re on top of a waterfall.”

Litchfield in the wet season is generally pretty full, as you can only swim at Florence and the Buley Rockholes, and the weather is such that you really want to swim! So we decided to walk there, and were utterly amazed that we had the entire place to ourselves all day. I imagined all those other people braving the crowds… ah well!

The highlight of the walk were the enourmous golden orb spiders. We saw a few big ones, then ran into two that were just enormous, easily bigger than my hand.

Other than that, just a great day chilling out on top of Litchfield!

 


On top of the waterfall


In the rockpool