Day 3 – Monday 19 August
Crystal Falls to 17 Mile Falls via the Amphitheatre
This morning, we set the alarm to 5:45am. Again, we were ready by 6:30am and waited
until 6:40am to have enough light for crossing the water safely. The first kilometre of today took over 45
minutes, as there were lots of lumpy rocks to traverse, as well as the water
crossing. There were some great views back to Crystal Falls, followed by a
beautiful walk through relatively open country with light breezes when we were
near the escarpment. It was much cooler walking today than yesterday.
We saw some old signage today, presumably from when
the walk took a different route. The
sign we saw said 5.25km to Amphitheatre, when we were less than 4km from it by
the current track route. There was
minimal recent patch burning between Crystal Falls and the Amphitheatre. As a result, we saw more evidence of wildlife
than on the previous two days. We saw two lizards that were each about 20cm
long and scurried madly for cover at our approach, and scat, but no actual
sightings, from macropods.
Mid-morning we came to an open area of cool and
swampy grassland -it almost felt airconditioned after being on open stone
country. It was even complete with a
large log to sit on and rest. This area
would probably be quite muddy early in the season as it was still slightly damp
around the edges this late in the season.
The Amphitheatre was completely different to the
surrounding country above. It is not surprising that the indigenous inhabitants
retreated to this cool oasis and have left a legacy of art on the rock walls. Parks have thoughtfully added explanatory
signage for visitors. https://northernterritory.com/katherine-and-surrounds/see-and-do/the-amphitheatre
Packs are not taken down into the Amphitheatre and we had
been warned to make sure our packs had zippers facing toward the ground as the
crows have learnt to unzip packs – when we arrived at the Amphitheatre, we saw
crows attempting to gain entry to our fellow campers’ bags, and when we
returned from our side trip we saw them trying to get into ours. Glad we had
been warned and placed our bags accordingly.
From the Amphitheatre it was about one hours walk
to the 17 Miles Fall campground. View of 17 Mile Falls were seen from the trail
before we went past and then looped back to camp above the falls. The last 500m or so was over big rocks and
then a small boggy patch.
The main camp
area was quite small and was bare rock with no shade. Once again, we decided to
swim fully clothed and cool off before setting up camp. We were very grateful for this decision, as
when we went for our dip to cool off, we discovered another small, but shaded
and pretty, campsite on the opposite side of the water (i.e. back on the original
side of the creek, but you had to cross in two different spots to get there). We had arrived in camp about 10:45am and were
fully set up prior to midday.
The afternoon was spent swimming and exploring.
This was probably my favourite campsite.
The water was amazingly clear, and the views were so large. There were several small waterfalls and plunge
pools above the main waterfall. Upstream
was a long section of calm water to swim up.
We saw small yabbies in the water, and they nibbled at Drew’s toes when
he was filtering water for drinking.
Before dinner we took one final swim for the day at
the top of the falls. Again, we ended
the day with a beautiful sunset.
Distance 10.62km
Time 3h 40min
Ascent 139m
Descent 122m
