Litchfield Lodging
 

Hi,

My husband and I and our two boys (ages 5 and 9) will be spending several days in Kakadu, Katherine, Litchfield and Darwin. We have some ideas for where to stay in each place except Litchfield.

We will be there for 2-3 nights in early October. Can anyone recommend a place to stay? Note: we will have a car, so driving is not too much of an issue, but we would like to be relatively close to the park.

Thanks!

Kakadu is to the east of Darwin about 3 hours drive if I remember correctly while Katherine is south and about 2.5 hours drive or so so you cannot be close to the park of one and be near the other. Its a while since I was up that way so I am not up to date on accommodation but if I was going I would be taking one of the 4 wheel drive tours which take in all of those places and have camping accommodation or Pub accommodation and which is far more interesting that doing it yourself. Also you get to places that you cannot do yourself.

Hi Bic,
Sorry forgot to mention accomodation for Litchfield in earlier post. We stayed at Batchelor which is near to Litchfield in a cabin at the Big 4 caravan park.It was very basic. There was another cabin setup closer to the park. I will look it up and get back to you. I think there was also a motel attached to the caravan park we stayed in.I have lent my info to a friend but probably can google same.

Hi
There are a few options on google- just had a quick look. Banyan Tree Caravan and tourist park is located close to entrance of Litchfield and has family cabins. You drive through Batchelor and will pass other accomodation such as the "resort" and other Caravan parks. There is a small grocery store and a butterfly farm in town also.

Hi Wallos,

Yes, I found out about the Batchelor-resort (I think it was http://www.batchelor-resort.com )and noticed that they had cabins as well as motel rooms. The cabins were on the order of $130 per night for the 4 of us and the rooms were $155 per night. I could not find a wide range of accomodations and was wondering if there was some other hidden gem out there that someone knew about.

Now, we just need to settle on where to stay in Darwin.....

The first night that we arrive will be close to 1:00 a.m. and don't plan to do much the next day except hire a car, pick up groceries and head to Kakadu.

So, where to stay near the airport in Darwin, where we can arrive at 1:00 a.m. and just crash asap???

We will likely stay at The Cullen Bay Apartments for 3 night when we return to Darwin, but are not sure where to stay upon arrival from Sydney.

thanks again!

Re: Litchfield...Batchelor is the main little town associated with Litchfield. I think it has around a thousand residents, maybe less. There is a small grocery (look for the cabinet where they sell the fresh bread baked daily), a takeaway, petrol.

There are several caravan parks around the area. The only one with much of a web presence is the Batchelor Resort as far as I could tell. We stayed there for 1 night about 2 weeks ago in the caravan park cabin. They only have 4 cabins, but it looks like they are building for more right behind the current ones. (though this construction didn't bother us during the times we were there...view out the back of the unit was of the construction, though)

The cabin is basically a small rectangular box trailer (which seems to be a theme in cabins in the NT). It was very clean, modern & well maintained (esp. compared to the Riverview cabin where we were the night before in Katherine) and with a well stocked kitchenette, though no microwave. Has a double bed and 2 twin beds. It has no charm from the outside AT ALL. There is no outside table, no covered area outside and there is no foliage or trees around it to make it feel at all private. The 4 units are staggered in their placement, though, so the windows don't line up and you can't see in your neighbor's window.

The caravan park is a short walk from the motel part, but definitely separated. You can go over to the motel where there is a restaurant. There is a nice but simple pool at the motel but a kind of crummy looking pool at the caravan park. I don't know if the caravan park people can use the pool at the motel. There is also a mini golf setup at the caravan park which is nothing more than concrete poured holes. It isn't much so don't think this is really a mini golf course.

We only spent one night here as we drove from Katherine to Batchelor in the morning (about a 3 hour drive, with 2 short stops along the way--so Katherine to Darwin would definitely be longer than the 2.5 hr. drive Liz remembered) and when we got to the resort around noon we found we couldn't get into the cabin until later so we headed to the park to check out the falls, etc.

This took all afternoon, was fabulous, and we didn't get back until about 6 pm or later at the cabin. We were so tired! We ate in the cabin, then wandered over to the motel part and found some folks we'd met earlier. Sat with them while they ate. My husband peeked into a motel room and said it looked nice, but wasn't more than a typical motel room.

So my take on this place is that it is fine, if uninspired. It would give you much more space than the motel rooms which are more expensive. It could be so much nicer if they'd just do a few plantings, set up a picnic table, etc. by the cabins. I don't know about the other caravan parks in the area that might have cabins, but there are several we noticed driving to and from Litchfield.

I found it hard to book anything in this area from the US. I finally had my friend in Cairns call the Batchelor Resort (based on the website) and make the booking. They were very spotty about responding to e-mail and I didn't even find e-mail addresses for most other places.

I wished we had stayed at Batchelor for 2 nights, with a plan for getting in there late in the day so we could have the whole next day to explore Litchfield. Then spend the next night and get up early to head to Darwin.

The reason to stay near there is because of the park and you can easily spend the whole day hiking, swimming in the falls pools, etc. Take food for a picnic. Definitely carry water.

The Batchelor Resort cabin was fine for us as it was clean and well supplied. It wasn't the type of place you would want to hang around for a long time, not "home-like" as some cabins I've stayed in have been, but you are there for Litchfield so this would be a fine place to spend your nights. As for the other caravan parks, none of them looked especially fabulous from the road but there might be a gem hidden out there.

Also, I think the hotels and restaurants in Darwin are used to having people arrive from and leave for the airport at weird times. I think I read that there is no legislation from the Territory that requires the Darwin airport to close, unlike most other airports that are required to close for part of the night. So the airlines make use of this by scheduling flights in and out of Darwin at these awful times...like our 1:30 am flight to Sydney!

So I'll bet you will find that most hotels will have staff on when you arrive. Just let them know the time. We took a cab from the airport to downtown for around $25-30. The shuttle bus cost about $8-9 per person so for three of us the taxi made sense. We picked up our car (a Nissan X-Trail--loved it and drove 1800 km in it) from Budget the next morning, which was an easy walk from our hotel on the Esplanade (Palms City--very nice). Thrifty is also located right downtown.

Hi Bic,
We also caught a cab because there were four of us and coincidently stayed at the same hotel. They have 24hr hotel staff - who were extremely helpful to us as our daughter's bag complete with favourite doll was mistakenly picked up by another passenger !! They took the other bag back to the airport found ours and returned it to us by breakfast next morning !!. We were able to walk to pick up our hire car and head to Woolies for the purchase of groceries , supplies etc. Not sure if you enjoy a wine or beer but once in Kakadu alcohol is limited in supply and extremely expensive. So, we took a corkscrew and a few bottles with us for those peaceful times once the kids are in bed !!

In all of the discussions of travelling in Litchfield, Katherine, and Kakadu, there really has not been much discussion about what sort of vehicle to rent. LynAK had a Nissan X-trail ... that's not really a four wheel drive, is it? The cost difference between a vehicle like an X-trail, and a heavy duty 4WD, is substantial ... can we get to see most of the "good stuff" with a "lesser" vehicle? What about a plain old regular car, for that matter?

The X-Trail is a 4WD although I did not specifically request this as I'd decided we'd forego any places that really needed 4WD to see. We were advised by the folks at the Bowali Center that we could make the drive to one of the places off the southern hwy (can't remember the name right now, but it started with an M..not Jim Jim Falls..and that we could have gone to Gunlom) with the X-Trail. We didn't do it though as we ran out of time.

The X-trail was great for us. My husband is a big man and he was very comfortable in this car. I liked being a bit higher off the ground than in a regular car. Easier to see off into the distance. Our 10 year old was very happy in the back seat and could see everything. Later we rented a regular car in Sydney and she was unhappy in the back seat because she was sitting down so low.

On car rentals in the NT. When I first booked with Budget the booking said we'd get 100 km per day free and then would pay per km after that. I wasn't sure we could do it all with 100 km per day but couldn't find another deal that worked out or had unlimited miles (doesn't seem to be the practice in NT) so decided to just hope for the best. We were pleased to find that we had 200 km per day when we picked up the car...and we needed every bit of it. We did not "budget" our driving as we would have if we'd been restricted to 100 km per day, but we ended up driving 1800 km in our 9 days. Darwin-Jabiru-Cooinda-Katherine-Mataranka-Katherine-Batchelor (Litchfield area)-Darwin

I'm really glad to be able to pass on this info to you.

Anyway, loved the X-trail. It did everything we needed and could have done more.

Hi Mr Bic,
We did the lot in a toyota corolla hatch. Ample room as you really don't need many clothes !! Groceries and esky bag took up most of the room. Petrol is expensive and we found our little car quite powerful and comfortable. Make sure you get air conditioning !!Roads ar alot better than you would probably expect and off road driving really isn't all that necessary to see the sites previously discussed with Mrs Bic. have a great trip.

bump as this thread has some good info