Three of us, myself, Ken and Fergal, left Darwin late Friday and drove to Emerald Springs where we had a pleasant evening. Rooms were basic but clean and not expensive ($65 for a single or double), meals reasonably priced, large but not overlarge portions – and tasty. Fokker, Thongs (I was asked not to use real names so I’ve used Hash House Harrier nicknames) and Felicity left Darwin very early the next morning and met us at Emerald Springs just past 8:30 am. We drove back to the turn off and headed in. As we had two good 4WDs and there were some very fresh tyre tracks ahead of us, we simply drove on to the turn off to the first camp site, then to the top of the hill, 4.0 km from the highway.
Our camp was only 50m from the cars. Given all the rain that there had been and all the water on the track, we did better than I’d expected. We set up the tents plus a big fly for us all and a smaller one for the fire. Then headed off downstream with day packs. We eventually came to a small waterfall below which was a mass of people – the other group that had driven in. We waved, and continued downstream to another waterfall where we had lunch…