Post trip - exploring Litchfield

This was our last view of beautiful Coral Bay from the deck of the Seven Spirit Bay Lodge last Monday morning. We had an 8.30 start from the lodge - on our way back to Darwin.

It was back to the Vashon Head airstrip for us - we were in the first group to leave Cobourg Peninsula today. Our little Cessna 12 seater had to have its freight load unpacked before we could get loaded. Mia was our pilot and chief cargo handler - just one more of the many young women (mostly under 30 I'd say) who have been the backbone of the Outback Spirit operation here in the NT. They have been amazing, driving trucks, boats, planes, guiding, cooking, everything!

While some of the guests relaxed in air conditioned comfort in the terminal.

We crossed over the waters of Van Diemen's Gulf on the 45 minute flight back to Darwin - and across the southern coast of Melville Island.

Our tour group was booked into the Hilton Garden Inn on Darwin Esplanade and a sunset harbour cruise was on offer on our last night as a finale to this fabulous tour of Arnhem Land.

Darwin turned on another sensational sunset for us to enjoy as we dined on beautiful seafood and enjoyed the customary Outback Spirit open bar hospitality.

Having David and Ro with us on this trip has made it really special for us. We're gonna miss them - as they're heading straight back to Cairns after this.

We all have enjoyed this trip so much - seeing such a unique and remote part of Australia, being so well looked after by Outback Spirit and our EXCELLENT tour leader/driver Dave. We were also lucky to be in the company of very good fellow travellers, most of them rather elderly like us but pretty fit and spritely with it - mostly.

So we set out on our own yesterday...... picking up our Sixt hire car from Darwin Airport and then heading south to Litchfield National Park. It felt quite hard travelling without someone organising our morning tea, lunch and dinner, afternoon drinks, organising our guides and outings and sorting our washing too!!

We'd been to Litchfield on a previous visit to the NT many years ago but couldn't remember much about the details. Our first stop was Wangi Falls on the far western loop road of the National Park. It's a stunning stop but popular with visitors these days (there certainly weren't as many people around on our previous visit).

This very cute lace monitor wasn't fazed by all the people about.

We decided to do the steep climb to the top of the falls despite the whole of the loop walk not being accessible today because of repair work. The climb was pretty tough for us - very rough, uneven footing and quite steep too. We were very careful especially coming back down.....

The view from the top was pretty amazing though.

Coming back down, this view out to the carpark in the distance shows how high up we were.

This section of monsoon forest was a welcome respite after climbing so high in 30oC heat.

We drove back then towards the eastern entry to the park - deciding we only had one more walk in us today. This was to Florence Falls......... where it was an easy walk to get to the lookout.

........ but 135 steps down to the waterfall plunge pool - luckily they were beautifully constructed this time, very safe to navigate, very even.

It was lovely to sit and relax here for a while beside the pools of gurgling water as the impact of the hot day and the after effects of a pretty hectic (but highly indulgent) two weeks hit us.

We drove back to our basic cabin accommodation at Pandanus on Litchfield around 4pm. Luckily the a/c worked well and after a rest and cool down we were ready to go looking for our dinner at nearby Batchelor. We're heading for Katherine tomorrow.

Last day in the Cobourg Peninsula

Last night's dinner on the deck at sunset was a memorable end to our first full day at the Seven Spirit Bay Wilderness Lodge. Meals throughout the trip have been restaurant quality - but it's the settings that are truly mind blowing (and the free flowing open bar tab each night - wow wow wow!) and this one is probably the best of the best.

We had an easy day today, our last full day at Seven Spirit Bay. We enjoyed a 4WD "safari' in the morning with our favourite guide Maddie looking at some of the natural wonders of the Garig Gunak Barlu National Park surrounding our resort. 

Maddie could make any excursion memorable but she was at her best this morning - making termite activity in the national park enthralling (among other things) - this is an arboreal termite mound apparently .............

... and then she spotted this Banteng cow feeding near the road. They are feral nuisance animals now after their ancestors were released at the abandonment of the Victoria Settlement in the 1840s (along with pigs and Timor ponies and all sorts of other animals and plants that are ecological problems now).

Bentang cows are very timid so we were lucky to see this obscured view of one in the nearby undergrowth.

She found us this bower bird nest too ....... and later we had a sighting of an actual bower bird.........

More Turkey Bush - and another Turkey Bush story. Maddie's was better than the previous one we'd heard - and this bush was flowering at camera height!!

This is our favourite guide, Maddie, enthralling us all with her descriptions of the fresh water mangrove forests and how amazing the paperbarks are for providing vital medicines, handy tools and also supplies of fresh water in desperate times. She really can make any subject absolutely enthralling and quite funny too!.

A beautiful, lush spot in this otherwise dry, "fire farmed" Savannah forest.......

At the end of our walk this morning we came upon the Nypa Palm "gallery", one of only four locations in Australia where these quite fickle plants can be found growing..........

It was quite lovely to stay a while here, enjoy the lushness and observe the prolific birdlife in the area.

We'd obviously worked hard enough this morning to deserve a very special lunch event at a beach a bit south of our lodge - at Low Point (but definitely NOT a low point in our day!).

Staff had erected a marquee for us on the beach, set up a long table with all the trimmings including linen this and linen that - and cooked us a superb bar-b-que lunch with all the extras. Of course there was the usual full open bar as well (transported there in big eskies).

Not a bad beach setting as a backdrop! ..................

After lunch we were taken out in one of the lodge's state of the art fishing vessels (with our own driver guide) for an afternoon's fishing adventure around the sheltered bays of Port Essington. It was just David and Ro and me and Rob with Norm, our Aboriginal fishing guide in our boat........

Unfortunately the winds were too strong to go too far into the exposed waters of the port. We all got drenched and a bit too rocked about trying to venture too far out of the more sheltered bays. In the end Norm decided to keep us safe and closer into shore for our fishing adventures today.

I caught the first fish - woohoo - a Queen fish (of course). She was ginormous but not suitable to keep (the lodge's chef makes the decision about which fish will be kept and which will be released on any given day (a no waste policy!). My Queenie was released, I'm pleased to say, after giving me all the fun of catching her!

Rob made a great catch too........

... a very jumpy barracuda - also released!

Norm was a taciturn guide but an absolute gun fisherman - I loved his lure knotting techniques. We kept him busy with our inexperience and the rate at which our fish were biting. Bless him!

David was next - hooking this barracuda after losing 2 fish at the last minute as they were being brought into the boat.

After persisting with a few lure fails Ro finally landed this mackerel - her personal fish totem.... such a wonderful way to end off our day at Seven Spirit Bay.

We had another round of sunset drinks and canapes on the sunset deck of the lodge tonight and one last chance to enjoy a superb evening meal with a lovely bunch of people we've shared this amazing adventure with. It's back to Darwin tomorrow!!

Seven Spirit Bay

Due to the impassable roads Outback Spirit flew us by light plane from Mount Borradaile to their Seven Spirit Bay Resort on the Cobourg Peninsula yesterday. 

So instead of an 8 hour bumpy bus ride on corrugated dirt roads and river crossings we flew in 12 seater Cessnas - making it a 45 minute trip to the northern most tip of the Northern Territory over some of the most spectacular wetlands and salt pans of Western Arnhem Land - a truly spectacular trip!

This was the second Cessna for our group - showing the rough expanse of the Mt Borradaile air strip beyond..........

Belted up ready to go ......

Flying over Mt Borradaile and the wetlands where we'd done our sunset cruise the night before............

Seven Spirit Bay is an Outback Spirit Resort overlooking Coral Bay in Port Essington in the Garig Gunak Barlu National Park. Like the other resorts we've stayed in it is comprised of individual cabins joined by bush tracks to the main lodge where meals are served and where guests can enjoy a drink, socialize or swim, or just laze by the pool.This is the most luxurious of all the lodges we have stayed in so far.

Our eco cabin has no glass windows - instead it has whole walls of screened metal louvres open to the sea breezes - perfect!!

But the bathroom has solid walls!

We took a walk around the resort grounds yesterday afternoon - and came across a small crocodile on this stretch of beach. It scurried back into the water when it heard us approaching!

Down by the boat jetty we were mesmerised by the performance of this school of sharks swimming around and around the platform where we were standing, looking incredibly elegant and friendly - at least seven of them. They gave us a wonderful performance. We learnt later they were Lemon Sharks - very friendly towards people they say - the labradors of the shark world!

Around 6pm most days on this trip we gather for drinks as the sun sets. It's especially good because Outback spirit runs an open bar wherever we stay! The Seven Spirit Bay sunset rated very highly compared to all the others we have enjoyed so far.

This morning we headed to our meeting point at the lodge quite early ready for our boat cruise around Port Essington.

Port Essington is expansive - at least 15klm wide and at least 3 times that long. Our boat travelled at around 50klm an hour for sections of today's cruise creating lots of up and down movement and sea spray against the headwind - exciting stuff!

Our first stop was at the site of the ill fated Victoria Settlement, the British Government's third attempt at colonising Northern Australia and establishing a viable port settlement. Victoria Settlement only lasted 11 years but was eventually abandoned due to deaths, disease, starvation, cyclones, malaria and almost every other plague known to man (or woman). 

It seems that the settlement's "governor" John MacArthur (son of the Sydney colony's John and Elizabeth) forged positive relationships with the local Iwaidja people and governed the colony in a fairly enlightened way for the times. However, this part of the world was just not the right place for a port or for Europeans to settle and thrive in the 1840s.

We walked to the site of the original settlement, very little of which remains to this day after a hundred and eighty years or so of extreme weather, destruction, plundering and other forces of nature.

This was the settlement's underground gunpowder magazine......

These substantial chimneys are the only remaining signs of the settlement's "married quarters".

This is what remains of the settlement's hospital........

At least it had a great view........

There was a lot of arrogance and stupidity on the part of the British Government in their decision making and resourcing of this settlement but we were left feeling in awe of the resourcefulness and strength of the settlers themselves given the challenges they faced in these harsh conditions.

We returned to the boat then .........

..... cruising then as far south as West and East Bays - enjoying a "mobile lunch" in the calm waters of Barrow Bay..........

...... and then returning north to Reef Point to admire the rainbow cliffs with their richly defined layers of ochres and bauxite (hopefully no mining will be allowed here!).

A view of Seven Spirit Bay Lodge from our boat as we returned to the Coral Bay jetty....

As we disembarked our amazing tour guide and boat captain Maddie spied the resident Lemon Sharks and gave them a huge welcome. One of the sharks in particular loves having its back rubbed by Maddie with this broom. We all fell in love with the adorable, knowledgeable, quirky and capable Maddie on this trip so this was a perfect way to end our morning of cruising the Cobourg Peninsula with her!