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Tuesday 17th and Wednesday 18th April.
Warning ! This entry contains a Where’s Paul!
WE left Hall’s Creek late because we only had a short trip –
150 Kms and 100 of that was on bitumen. We thought it would only take a couple
of hours to get to Purnululu National Park. WRONG!
The last 50 Kms were the worst stretch of road we have
travelled on during this trip so far.
We travelled the entire 1000 Kms of the Tanami Track with only
3 casualties. 3 eggs!
We travelled 50 Kms into the Bungle Bungles and lost two hub
caps for the trailer’s wheels and shredded one of the trailer tyres 200 meters
from our camp site!
The Walardi Camp site
was way above our expectations, beautiful grassy areas , with large shady trees
ringing each generous camp site. And the Facilities! Spotlessly clean long
drops which smelt of freshly linseed painted walls.
Day 2 in the Bungles saw us up at 6.00 am (still in SA time)
so we decided to do our walks in the fresh morning air before the sun became
too fierce.
The first walk to Cathedral Gorge was the most spectacular
for us. We wound our way around the striped beehive shaped domes and then
entered a very long and deep gorge which lead up to the amphithetre where a
permanent pool at its base.
Immense walls towered above us and there was evidence that
two large sections had actually split away from the original sandstone and had
slipped during a major upheaval of the earth to form a keystone above the
cathedral pool .
We visited other places of interest including the mini palms
walk and several lookouts but nothing rivaled our early morning experience in
the Cathedral Gorge.
To me, the grandeur of the red domed Bungle Bungles
against the vivid blue skies and the
underlying fragility of the geology in this area was all symbolized in this
chance photo taken during the walk to the valley of the mini palms when I was
lucky enough to spot this beautiful butterfly alight on these pretty red
flowers. My favourite colours!
Thanks for the beautiful pictures of the Bungle Bungles. I too remember the trip out to the bungles as being extremely rough. However I thought the last couple of kms to the camping ground were the most scary we had ever done - extremely loose sand and traffic coming the other way with a two wheel track to follow. Close your eyes and pray for the best. If you think that track is rough you still have some more to come on some of the side tracks on the gibb river road. Gill you have some gorgeous pictures. Were there tiny little frogs in the water of the pool at the bottom of the area where the rocks split. i was amazed by the numbers of frogs we saw in the water pools. Apart from the picture of paul changing the tyre, I am assuming that the where's Paul picture is him squatting in the grass???!!! Doing what?!.
ReplyDeleteThe pictures are simply stunning... Especially the one of the Beautiful red domed Bungle Bungles, they'd look so pretty inside your house! What an amazing trip, I never imagined you'd be travelling to such beautiful and untouched sights! The Cathedral Gorge looks breath-taking. Wow!!
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