A ring of water courses skirts the Kakadu world heritage area. One of these, Edith Falls, relatively close to Katherine, was our next stop. It was another ‘you-can’t-book-so-get-here-as-early-as-you-can’ places. We were given two options, and picked a lovely spot that we were told was far from other campers with kids – thinking our boys would then have a chance to get some homework done! This is their sword of Damocles, and homework always seems to be done under duress. So sure enough as Murphy would have it, within half an hour of setting up, our new neighbours kids came over to play, and some previous lappers we’d met at El Questro turned up with their brood also. So inevitably, it was homework, schmomework! The boys actually had a ball adding to an existing tree-house that kept them and their new friends busy on and off for the whole stay.

Tree house extraordinaire, complete with two offices and “gardens”.

We arrived early enough to fit in a coffee before a walk to upper Edith Falls. A stunning water fall and pool system that we swam in and around for the rest of the afternoon.

The view of middle Edith Falls.

James and I kept busy at the top falls by jumping off ledges above the waterfall, all captured on my GoPro for posterity – confirming a previous truism of mine that the only point of a GoPro is ‘to film yourself doing something stupid’.

The upper falls at Edith Falls.

That afternoon, I squeezed in an oil change on the Cruiser as the sun set. Next morning, Kris and the boys headed back to Edith Falls. I took the opportunity to up the pace and headed to Sweetwater Pool alone, a 10 km round trip that I did as fast as I could. I returned to find the family still at the upper falls, which meant more jumping into the deep clear pool under the waterfall.

That afternoon, James and I borrowed some inner tubes and swam to the lower falls, a 300m return swim – in water we were assured was almost certainly possibly croc free. After a precipitous climb up the near vertical 8m waterfall, we both jumped in and swam back. Kris cooked a delicious pork BBQ before we turned in, ready to catch up with Kris’s cousin Ros tomorrow.