Day 62 – 20th July – Charnley River Station

Today’s agenda was to explore the pools of Charnley River Station - Lily Pool, Grevillea Pool and Donkey Pools.

First up was Lily Pool.  Unfortunately, the lack of water around means a lot of these pools are stagnant and so have a rather thick layer of bright green algae along the bottom… certainly no good for swimming. 

The next, Grevillea Pool, was the most fun of the day…  From the car park you climb down a conveniently placed ladder to reach the bottom of a small gorge.  

From there you walk downstream to come across a small (approx. 2m) trickle of a waterfall.  It’s pretty easy to scoot around this waterfall and clamber down to the next level.  This is where it gets trickier.  Further downstream you come across a 30m waterfall and the only way to reach the pool at the bottom is to navigate down the rock wall of the waterfall.  This photo shows Grevillea Pool at the bottom but doesn’t do a very good job of showing the waterfall that drops away… 

Things were slow going getting down.  The rocks were slippery particularly where you had to cross the water trickling over the fall.  We actually had to stop regularly and plan a route down.  Half way down:

Half way down and looking back up to the top:

All the way to the bottom without incident (meaning the 10 year old boy had no scrapes, bruises or lumps).  Looking from the bottom back up to the top:

We had been told there were some Aboriginal art on the rock walls past the pool.  There were two options for getting to them, swim across or squeeze your way around the rock ledge to the left.  One feel of the icy water decided it… a shimmy along the rocks.  There were sections here where I ended up crawling on all fours to get through… luckily I don’t have any photos of that… 

The rock art was easy to find, however we have no idea of its authenticity or age…  The first one is a crocodile and the second a pair of goannas. 

We managed our way back around to the pool where all the gear came off ready for a swim.  I put my feet into the water and instantly felt a foot-numbing pain it was so cold.  So far the kids have swam at every waterhole that can be swum in… but not this one…   So all the gear went back on and we made the climb back up the waterfall. 

Our last stop for the day was Donkey Pools… where we were promised a nice swimming waterhole.  The kids got their swim so everyone was happy… 

On returning back to the homestead we learned a largely unpublicised fact.  The Mornington Wilderness Camp, where we had previously been turned away, was run by the same group as Charnley (Australian Wildlife Conservancy).  We were extra nice to the lady running the show and what do you know, she could book us into Mornington the next day… we found the back door in…  It meant another early start as we still needed to be at the gate by 8am but fingers crossed, it was worth the effort…