“Freedom, It is to be able to choose which one will be the slave.” Jeanne Moreau

While some of our compatriots are preparing soon to celebrate the 14 July, au cœur du parc national de Litchfield We meet Louise and Julian at Litchfield Café - which organizes buffets for the busloads of tourists - before you commit to a week of HelpX from overnight because we must first go to Darwin to buy two new tires - ah yes and visit ! We leave the Park after a round in their second trade : Wangi coffee where Kali and Remi, the two responsible for french waiting for a Sponsorship Visa, presents the... French team if a German on the departure and a Taiwanese.

En route to the coffee....

En cuisine

If Australian cities are rather young, Darwin it is unfortunately even more following the Japanese World War II bombing and cyclone Tracy in 1974 which destroyed nearly three quarters of buildings. We welcome not long, simply a round its streets and a stop in edge of ocean we've not seen since Bloomfield. It is in the nearby town of Palmerston that we visit next week for the installation of two new tires in front at Ktyres - owned chain Coles-Kmart. We would simply reconditioned tires but this does not exist in the North of the Australia, the warmth of the bitumen not giving a second chance to rubber ! We are back in the national park in time to share the evening with the team meal of “helper” and install us in our donga : a container housed.

Blue Kookaburra

Glossy Ibis

Le lendemain Monsieur part travailler en cuisine au Wangi Café alors que je reste au Litchfield pour aider à la préparation du buffet. If I say work is that they require six hours a day for five days, what we consider to be a bit too simple HelpX but we enjoy the setting and evenings in my native language while waiting for our rendezvous 21. On the site we meet wallabies, shiny glossy ibis and a silent male kookaburra and we avoid the piles of dead leaves where the common death adder like to curl. After three days at the buffet, je joue le commis de Monsieur le samedi 18 and hold the Aboriginal art gallery on Sunday : journée tranquille – trois ventes 🙂 – that leaves me plenty of time to read several small books on the interpretation of Aboriginal art, les boomerangs, l’histoire du Temps du Rêve puis du Serpent Arc-en-ciel pendant que Monsieur cuisine des burgers.

Florence Falls

Tolmer Falls

Monday 20 juillet c’est notre week-end et nous partons en vadrouille avec l’une de nos collègues pour visiter le parc dans lequel nous vivons depuis cinq jours mais dont nous n’avons rien vu d’autre que la route entre les deux cafés ! Nous remontons la route principale pour un tour au Florence Falls où nous arrivons à temps pour voir un plongeur fou – visible sur la photo 😉 – et au Buley Rockhole bien trop surpeuplé pour que nous en profitions. Across the road is the Swamp Tabletop deserted by bipeds but teeming with animal life.

Buley Rockhole

Tjaynera Falls

After a stop at high Tolmer Falls – trickle of water in this season – we commit to the track leading to Sandy Creek and Tjaynera Falls where we have to cross a river that has nothing to do with the short, shallow we have taken on the road between Cape Tribulation and Bloomfield in Queensland. The one that stands before us forty centimeters deep, several meters long and probably crocodiles in the tall grass lining the passage. We reach the other side without incident and feet always dry to continue on the undulating and rocky trail to the camp of Sandy Creek where a march of seven kilometers takes us to a small paradise where we enjoy sandwiches and swimming.

Back at the base for our last night, after a look at Wangi Falls who looks like a municipal pool with all these tourists, tomorrow morning we drive to Palmerston and once installed tires direction Kakadu National Park.

He rang a bell cow to let us know that dinner was ready, large table for twenty people, if it is not, avec toujours le même gratin de légumes, mais des viandes variables. Il exploitait un peu les jeunes voyageurs en quête de second visa, du coup, quand nous partîmes nous fûmes suivis d’au moins cinq personnes !

Soirées belote avec les françaises, le camion pourri jusqu’à la moelle, les porcs qui récupèrent les restes, l’internet au lance-pierres … Pas mal dans l’ensemble, mais le top c’était les douches extérieures où on te voit les pieds et la tête 😉

Ca et la nage avec des crocodiles aux chutes de Sandy Creek !