Getting a bit toe-y now as the end of the trip gets closer. Up and off across the tableland to the Tolmer Falls lookout. The falls and gorge are home to endangered bats so no entry but an interesting enough walk through the scrub at the top. Then a fast descent off the tableland to the turnoff to the Litchfield-Daly River 4WD track that runs down the west side of the Litchfield NP.

Turning off the bitumen onto the dirt 4WD track the road quickly turned to deep dust until about half a kilometre in we came to the ford in the Tolmer Creek. The water was knee deep, muddy and about 50 m wide.

Brian and Christine made the decision that it looked too ‘croccy

’ to risk and the track looked like it might get worse so they turned back and headed back north to the Wangi Falls in the national park.

I walked across the ford to assess the depth and decided to unload

my bike and take it and the gear over in several loads. Chris O’B just wheeled everything through.

I had just done the first trip with some gear when a National Park utility truck came through and asked what we were doing. They said that Chris and I were mad, absolutely stupid and a few other things. The creek was full of crocs, the crocs were attracted by the disturbance of the 4WDs going through and we were lucky to have come out of the creek with the same number of legs that we went in with. More importantly the rangers did not want to have to catch a croc, cut it open and re-assemble my body from the bits in its guts and then write up the report.

As we were already mostly across they couldn’t stop us but made us promise not to try wading across creeks like that again. Chris rode off while I had a last talk with the rangers who suggested going in to the old Blyth homestead a few kilometres further on.

I separated from Chris at the turnoff to the homestead as he continued south on the 4WD track. The homestead track went through another flooded crossing so, with the rangers rage ringing in my ears, I turned around. Shortly afterwards the rangers drove out from the homestead and were a little chastened that they had forgotten the stream when suggesting that I go in there.

While chatting we discovered that the female ranger Helga and I had worked out of the same office in Dwellingup in the 1980’s! We didn’t know each other as she worked in National Parks starting at 6 am with the campground rounds whereas I had worked in Forestry Research and started at 8 am. All I remember was a very cute blond ranger being swamped by hopeful Assistant Foresters and gangers. Helga gave me a can of her diet Lemonade and the other ranger Darius wished me well. Nice people.

Another 6 km and I camped at the Sandy Creek Falls and had a swim in the lovely large, clear, crocodile-free (signs assured that most crocs were spotted and removed before the tourist season) falls and plunge pool. Very nice.

Sandy Creek Falls, lovely spot but could light my pandanus cones as BBQ briquettes.

I tried eating the spiral pandanus nuts which are supposed not to be toxic as are most other pandanus. This failed because I couldn’t figure out how to bash open the hard fibrous seed coats (neither could anyone else in camp). The next advice was to use the dense nuts as fire coals but they were so hard that it took ages to get them to catch fire, and then they smouldered all night.

No sign of Chris O’B so he must have gone on.