Tuesday 13th July - Spring Creek Rest Stop to Purnululu National Park

There seems to be a bit of “German towel on the sun lounger around the pool” going on at the national park campsite (no offense Ron/Heini for the stereotype!), which we called into on our way to Piccaninny Creek. You seem to “reserve” your spot by placing your picnic table and chairs in it. I wonder what would happen if somebody came along and rearranged all the furniture? Being English we kept our table and chairs with us in the Land Rover, but still managed to find a nice site on our return after viewing sunset on the Bungle Bungles. SPOT

We started our day in the northern part of Purnululu National Park which, whilst it doesn’t have the famous beehive shaped rock domes, still has brilliant red rocks with deep gorges contrasted against green palms, almost luminescent spinifex and deep blue skies. Adding another gorge to our ever increasing list, Mini Palms Gorge lived up to its name with Livistona palms flanking the walls (although they weren’t so mini).

To progress up the gorge required negotiating huge chunks of conglomerate rock that almost filled the valley floor in places, but the effort was worth it to reach the narrow rock “amphitheatre” (tourist brochure speak for dead end).

I’m not sure the little girl who we passed on the way in would agree, as she kindly informed Anne that we weren’t nearly there yet and they had been walking for hours. The walk through Echidna Chasm was also stunning, and as fortune would have it we arrived around midday when the sun is at its optimum to light the 200m deep chasm.

With the walls closing in the sky becomes intermittent

and boulders are suspended overhead, lodged between the two walls (at least you hope they are). SPOT

Not so hard boiled eggs had to be spooned onto our bread at lunchtime; I think I should have left them in the pan for longer! We could tell the people at the picnic table next to us were jealous of our sandwiches though.

Stopping at the Kungkalahai lookout, we made plans to return tomorrow night for sunset so you’ll hopefully see a contrasting photograph across to the western escarpment of the Bungle Bungle massif (which is about 500 million years old).

We observed sunset today from the Picaninny Creek lookout, 20km to the south, where we witnessed the dramatic colour changes of the stripped sandstone domes.

I forgot to mention that we saw four Land Rover Defenders yesterday as we drove down the Great Northern Highway, which is more than we’ve seen the rest of our time in Australia. They didn’t appear to be together, but it’s good to see Land Rovers are still out there (and we even saw another one today as we were driving the 53km 4WD track that is the entry to Purnululu National Park).