Day 107 – 3rd September – Halls Creek

We made it into Halls Creek today.  We had enough time for a quick dip in the pool before we headed out for an afternoon of exploring… and yes, we managed to do Halls Creek in an afternoon…

45km out of town on a dirt track brought us to Sawpit Gorge.  We have seen some spectacular ‘gorges’ along the way so we were a little underwhelmed by this one… 

Our next stop was Palm Springs, a pretty little spring fed pool.

On the way back into town we had a quick look at the ruins of the Old Halls Creek Townsite but to be honest, there really wasn’t much left to look at.

Our final stop was China Wall, named after the Great Wall of China.  This wall is pretty cool.  It’s a naturally formed vertical wall of quartz that stands up to 6m high and apparently continues for some distance underground.  Over a considerably long time, the rocks surrounding the quartz were weathered and eroded away, leaving the much harder and resilient quartz.  The lattice-like structure makes it look like someone has built the wall brick by brick…

Day 106 – 2nd September – Bungle Bungles

We were not quite finished with the northern end of the national park.  Our first hike of the day took us into the Mini Palm Gorge.  Yep, you guessed it, it’s a stroll along a gorge that is full of palm trees…

At the mouth of the gorge were a bunch of boulders that needed to be traversed… us normal people ducked and weaved our way between the boulders, whereas my two mountain goats took the opportunity to climb over them…  

There was a nice platform leading into the final section of the gorge.  It was a pretty spot surrounded by palm trees… 

Resting at the end… 

Some trees manage to survive on the cliff faces… the palm trees tend to find the cracks where water seeps out and others send out roots to hang on for dear life…

Our hike into Mini Palm Gorge done, we jumped in the car and headed to the southern end of the national park.  This is the spot that the Bungle Bungles are famous for… those beehive domes with their distinctive stripes…  Here’s a fun fact…. the orange stripes are caused by the oxidisation of iron in the sandstone (which is white-ish in colour underneath that orange) and the grey stripes are caused by cyanobacteria (blue-green algae).  

We wondered around the domes for a bit then ended up in Cathedral Gorge.  Cathedral Gorge ends in a large amphitheatre where there is a pool of water which has clearly come from water flowing into the cavern from above, but at this time of the year it was a bit on the manky side…

I had all three lined up for a photo when one of them spotted a bird, no, a plane, no it’s … OK… it was just a bird… a white-quilled rock-pigeon to be precise… 16630

More trekking along a dry creek bed to find a lookout 

Here’s the view from the lookout.  The dry creek bed winding through the photo is the Picaninny Creek.  Can you imagine this view when there is actually water flowing through the creek? 

I had high expectations going into the Bungle Bungles… mixed with a little cynicism…  how special can a bunch of rocks be?  You know what?  It was pretty awesome… even the kids appreciated the funky domes.  That’s another tick of approval from the BK Family…

Day 105 – 1st September – Bungle Bungles

We were up bright and early to beat the heat… we had lots of walking ahead of us…  We were finally getting an opportunity to explore the famous Bungle Bungles.  It turns out the Bungle Bungles are actually an entire range with distinctly different regions of geology.  Our adventures started at the northern end with our first trek taking us into Homestead Valley.  Its name comes from some Aboriginal rock art depicting a homestead that existed somewhere around here… but there is no public access to see this art so we have to trust in the story…

Our 2km walk in was rather pleasant.  The landscape in the Purnululu National Park is far greener and prettier than we ever imagined… even the spinifex is green… 

The northern end of the range doesn’t contain the typical domes that most people associate with the Bungles.  The rock formations are still pretty impressive and well worth the effort to come and have a look but the thing that blew us away is the structure of these rocks… These cliffs are not just rock… they are made of what is known as ‘conglomerate’, so it is a whole bunch of smooth river bed stones that are essentially cemented together by sand… check out the boulder behind Aiden… that’s what all these cliffs look like close up… 

Most of our walking throughout the entire day was along dry creek beds.  With all those rocks at your feet it is impossible for a 10 year old to not pick one up and chuck it at something… but he didn’t realise how slippery the rocks are under your feet…  

Next on our list of adventures was Echidna Chasm.  Millions of years of erosion along a joint in the sandstone has formed a 180m chasm that we can walk through.  

This is how narrow it is in some sections… 

We timed the walk so we were inside the chasm when the midday sun directly above lights up the cavern.  This is the end point of the chasm 

At the end point looking straight up to the sky above 

Here we are patiently waiting for the sun to move overhead 

Looking back down the passageway we had just come through.  Check out that boulder perched precariously above the ladder… 

Coming out of the chasm this is what greets us… a little oasis in the outback… 

Our day was not finished there… as the sun was setting we did a short hike up to a lookout behind the campground to watch the sunset over the Bungle Bungle Range… 

Day 104 – 31st August – Purnululu National Park

Today we are heading to a spot we have heard a great deal about, so we have high expectations.  Bungle Bungles here we come…

It was an easy 200km to the turnoff then we had 50km of dirt to the information centre.  Good ol’ WikiCamps had loads of comments about how bad the road was… I am starting to think that WikiCamps is the domain of  those crusty old grey nomads that don’t do anything other than wash and shine their caravans all day long and write negative stuff on WikiCamps… Anyhow, the road was actually pretty easy going, it was just twisty, turny and up and down hills.  This is very hilly country through here… pretty too… 

We had several creek crossings to go through.  This one was a bit deeper than it looked… 

Here’s the guy in front of us going through what would have been the deepest crossing 

Unfortunately, we didn’t quite make it through unscathed.  We started noticing a rattle, then after one of the creek crossings it became quite a bit more than a rattle.  We pulled over for a look and it turns out the bash plate under the car was hanging on by one bolt… goodness knows when the other three fell out…  so a bit of roadside maintenance to pull the whole thing off then we were on our way again.

We got to camp mid-afternoon and Dave needed to tinker with the car so although we are camped right alongside the Bungle Bungle Range, we have yet to see any of it… that’s for tomorrow.

Day 103 – 30th August – Kununurra

Pack up day again… but guess what?  We’re back in Western Australia again! 

There is a quarantine check point on the WA/NT border.  You are not allowed to bring fruit, vegetables or honey into Western Australia.  Of course, being responsible citizens we had consumed all of our contraband.  Unfortunately, they wouldn’t just take our word for it so we had to open up the camper for them to have a look around…

After five and a half hours of driving we made it back into Kununurra.  On a spur of the moment we chose to camp at the Lakeview Caravan Park… what a spot!  Here’s our view over Lake Kununurra 

Day 102 – 29th August – Katherine Gorge

We were up bright and early today for a morning cruise in Katherine Gorge.  You can’t walk in and out of this gorge, it’s either a cruise or a canoe.  With the 37 degree days we’ve been having we thought the idea of canoeing was just a little too much effort… so we opted for the cruise.

Here we are at the boat launch… there is a nice little park and foreshore area along the river.  Usually you can swim here too but at the moment it is closed for swimming… which can mean only one thing… crocs.  So, I find it rather incredible watching this guy do his job… check out the dude getting everyone into their canoes… wouldn’t do that job even if you paid me a whole lot of money… 

Ready for our tour 

Katherine Gorge is actually made up of 9 individual gorges that are each separated by rocks.  So you go down First Gorge, hop off the boat or canoe, walk over the rocks, then hop back onto a new boat or canoe, travel to the end of the Second Gorge until you hit the rocks, and so on…  The cruise we were on only travelled up the first two gorges.  Here we are walking around to the second boat 

The Second Gorge is well known for this stretch.  Apparently it has a fancy name but for the life of me I can’t remember what it is. 

This is us enjoying the return trip back to the boat launch.  Even Spidey enjoyed the views... 

We spent the rest of the day relaxing and swimming in the hot springs.  Throughout my blog I have shared all the awesome places we have visited… now I have to share something equally as important to me… I have finally created a bookworm!  Aiden has never disliked reading but he has never really shown much enthusiasm… until we bought him a copy of Harry Potter.  For the last couple of days, every spare few minutes we have he ducks away into the car or finds a spot where he can read his book… I love it!