Limmen National Park - remote NT and beautiful - what a privilege.

Next we headed back through Borroloola into Limmen National Park – only made a national park in july 2012. There is only one road from south to north and we knew it would be fairly rough and slow driving but we hoped it would be beautiful and good fishing. First night was at Batten Creek where Russ caught 2 sooty grunter – what fun. The rivers are such an oasis in the NT where the surrounding countryside is so dry and dusty. The creeks are clear, surrounded by paperbarks and pandanus and just glorious…and very photogenic.

 

After hearing all sorts of reports about Lorella Springs, we decided to try it for ourselves. It’s expensive but it’s fairly understandable when they have to drive 3 hours over very rough roads  to Borroloola to get even the most basic supplies and 6 hours to Mataranka. Rhett is the only son still on the property trying desperately to make tourism pay, helped by his lovely new French girlfriend who worked in hotel marketing in London. The whole operation is very friendly from start to finish, happy hour is fun to catch up with other travellers and hear about their adventures for the day and to pick up your freshly baked bread from Crusty Dick.

Our morning walk to Crystal Springs revealed more new birds than we’ve seen on any single walk yet. And it was perfumed by flowering wattle and big bright gum flowers – of course, bringing out more honey eaters than ever.

 

Our afternoon drive to Inkspot Waterhole was a short drive (compared to the 8 hour return trip to Rosie’s fishing camp and the many other long drives to the various waterfalls, water holes etc) and was a beautiful clean peaceful swimming spot. At Eagle’s Nest Billabong we hopped in the tinny left there for guests and paddled around trying to catch barra or whatever we could get. Spotted the large White Necked Heron among the waterlilies.

To avoid bashing our car around too much, we made another big splurge and took the heli-fishing option with a bit of sightseeing thrown in. My first ever helicopter ride – was I scared with only a flimsy seat belt between me and the wind rushing past at 180km/hour!! No doors and nothing to hang onto. And it was a windy morning – pleased to land or what!! We caught a few fish but apparently the cold water and poor tides were to blame for us not getting some bigger ones. The helicopter pilot landed on a 20c piece on rocks at a series of pools at an inaccessible (by foot) and then disappeared for us to have a peaceful lunch and swim. We then flew over the Southern Lost City – bit like the Bungle Bungles and fascinating. Formed by erosion of the softer rock between the remaining pillars of rock.

We then continued on the dusty track through Limmen National Park, stopping at the Southern Lost City to wander amongst the stunning massive formations and Butterfly Springs.

 

Butterfly Springs is named after the thousands of butterflies that hang out on the rocks at the side of the pool.

 

Fishing tour of the gulf and King Ash Bay

Leaving Lawn Hill by the northern exit meant driving through piles of bull dust, more rough potholed roads and loads of river crossings. Kingfisher Camp was a lovely green oasis with fishing opportunities and lots of new birds. We rode our bikes to Goose Swamp for more birdwatching and some up close and personal experience with bull dust. 

From Kingfisher Camp our first river crossing confused us because we couldn’t work out where we would emerge from the water. Turns out you drive along the river for a while and then find a road at the end. We cautiously walked it first – cautiously because of the unknown-ness of it and because there could be crocs.

 

More bull dust, rough roads and steep river crossings. Felt like a Skittles advert – if you touched the bull dust on the car, the whole lot would avalanche down the car like water.

We drove along the southern edge of the gulf – very different to my expectations – I thought it would be muddy with mosquitoes but it’s very dry except for the occasional river that had water in it. It was certainly the road less travelled – some days we saw more abandoned vehicles than we saw cars driving on the road.

We did the fishing tour of the rivers of the gulf – some big rivers and lots of little streams that passed through paperbarks and pandanus. When possible we stopped and fished and sometimes stayed the night at a pull in near the river. This meant we could fish before and after dinner and sometimes before breakfast. Russ caught 4 massive barramundi one night about 2km upstream from the Calvert crossing – they all busted him off with their razor sharp gills but it was a massive buzz for him. Apparently they only have a 10 second memory but they didn’t succumb the next morning so maybe their memory is a bit longer than 10 seconds.

As we were approaching one crossing, a ute driven by a farm worker, charged down from another road from the right and sped through the river. Lucky we weren’t in their way!!

Borroloola (love saying that name) was a very sad town with townships on the outskirts and piles of glass and cans beside the road. You couldn’t buy wine at all and beer only after 2pm with ID. From here we headed to King Ash Bay to check the fishing. We thought about the houseboat option to explore the enormous estuary system and decided to splurge for 3 nights. It was fabulous – caught 2 large Barramundi, some black jewfish, mangrove jack and queen fish and some delicious mud crabs. It was very peaceful being along in the river at sunrise and sunset..a little spooky waking up and finding ourselves on mudflats at 1am and not sure whether to be amused, angry or frightened when we returned after our morning’s fishing at the mouth of the river in the tinny to find out houseboat absent. It had worked itself loose from the anchor and gone upstream!! The trip was another big fishing buzz for Russ. We both enjoyed finding some new birds including the striated heron and the “uncommon” large billed heron, sacred kingfisher and Caspian tern. Saw a few large crocs and an enormous grouper as Russ was on a muddy patch trying to catch live bait with a cast net (a dangerous thing to do in croc country) – big relief after Russ thought it was a big croc – just inches away in the water!