And out again

Mini palms gorge (not so mini)

 

Echidna Chasm

We were up at crack of dawn again yesterday morning to go on more walks, this time in the northern part of the park. We started with the Mini Palms gorge walk, which winds along a dry river bed, then into the gorge (and the relief of shade) where all of the Livistona palms are – they only grow here and in the eastern end of the Kimberley, where we saw them at Zebedee Springs. It was 11am and already getting hot by the time we got out, so we headed straight into the Echidna Chasm walk. It’s supposed to be the best time of day to do it, because the walls are so narrow, only 1m apart in some places, that the middle of the day is when you get light in there, and the walls have a lovely orange glow. It was really cool in there, walking through such a narrow gap with such tall walls around you (and great echoes!). No domes in this end of the park, but fantastic scenery on the drive over there, alongside the Bungle Bungle range. After all of that walking we spent the afternoon relaxing at the tent again, which was fun with the other two families, particularly since today we’re all heading in three different directions, and weren’t not sure when we might see them again. We’re hoping that we might overlap with the Ralhs while we go north to Darwin and they come south to Alice Springs, we’ll see, we’ve had such a great time all together anyway that we’ll miss them!

We drove on south to Halls Creek which isn’t too bad a little town - I still find it a bit off putting in each of these towns we go to that the shops all have tiny windows, ie no display windows, and the windows they do have all have security grills or bars on them, and there’s a fair amount of barbed wire too around the back. Still, it has two supermarkets, hardware, camping and electrical shops, three servos, all you could need, and a helpful information centre. More importantly we were given a tip that the bakery is very good and it certainly lived up to its name, providing really yummy lunch desserts for us, so good in fact that we’re going back again tomorrow. After stocking up in Halls Creek we did a side trip to China Wall, which is a big seam of quartz sticking up out of the ground looking exactly like a crumbling stone wall - it’s possibly a bit of a stretch to say that it’s like the Great Wall of China but you take what tourist attractions you have I guess and sell them as best you can. It does look pretty cool, having said that, it’s 6m high in some spots, and interesting how the quartz has worn away at the corners and in creases so it looks like it’s made out of big blocks of it. Apparently the reason that it’s sticking up in view is because the land around it has eroded away, exposing it, and there’s apparently quite a lot of it around here, just not as visible as this bit. Couldn’t find the camera at the time unfortunately so no pictures.

After that it was a late lunch at Caroline Pool which is a nice picnic spot – we felt a bit bad watching someone else help pull another family out of the sand down there, they had gone a bit too low and it was too soft, but we were starving and had lunch dessert to eat! Plus it was good entertainment. After that it was a further drive down to Sawpit Gorge where we camped for the night. It’s a nice place but you’re camping on river rocks and it wasn’t at all flat, so not the most comfortable, even if it was very scenic.