Day 68 – 26th July – Barnett River Gorge

On the move again, but today was an easy drive.  We only had to go 10km further up the Gibb before we hit the Barnett River Gorge.  This one took us a bit by surprise… we hadn’t heard much and there was no signs at the car park.  What took us by surprise was the length of the hot, exposed walk in to the gorge which took us about 45 minutes during the heat of the day…

The track first reaches a nice lookout over the gorge 

You then follow the track along the gorge to reach a point where you can climb down.  At some rock pools along the way we saw more Water Monitors… we are seeing these guys just about everywhere now… 

Here’s where the track leads you, a small pool where you can have a dip. 

 Megan lay down in the water flowing over the rocks.  When she stood up she was covered in a million tiny little leeches.  Off came the bathers and a fair amount of scrubbing followed…
 

We had a hot trek back to the car, with a small amount of anxiety thrown in when we lost the path somewhere along the way… luckily Dave’s man-skills kicked in and we eventually stumbled across the path again.

We drove another 30km up the road to reach Mt Elizabeth Station.  We set up camp then Dave and the kids went tramping through the bush to find some firewood.  This is how Dave came home… 

Apparently Dave was so worried about a branch hitting the kids he forgot to worry about where he was standing… it was only a small puncture wound but it bled like nothing else…

Surprisingly, this has been the first time we have made our own camp fire on this trip.  There have been communal fires and we’ve bummed our way into other peoples fires, but we had never been organised enough to make our own.  We’ve had a packet of ‘Magic Fire’ in the glove box for a couple of months waiting for an opportunity.  You throw the whole packet in the fire and the flames turn blue and green… it must have lasted for at least half an hour… best $3 we’ve spent…