29 August - Bungle Bungle (Purnululu) National Park – walks of the Northern Section

29 August 2016 – 185 372

Bungle Bungle (Purnululu) National Park – walks of the Northern Section

This morning we got up at 5:00am and were out at the park ready to start walking at 8:00am.  Drew let the tyres down and this gave a smoother ride, but probably not much difference in driving time. https://parks.dpaw.wa.gov.au/park/purnululu  Today we went to the Northern Section of the park – this is quite different to the Southern Section – in my opinion it is more spectacular.  The first walk we did was the Homestead Valley walk, followed by the Mini Palms Gorge; both from The Bloodwoods.  

The Mini Palms Gorge walk was my favourite in Purnululu National Park, and surprisingly we saw almost no one on this walk.  

We then drove to the Echidna and walked to and into Echidna Chasm – this was pretty cool – it looked like you had reached the end, only to find a narrow opening that went around boulders and up ladders to reach the true end.  The height of the walls on each side was amazing.  https://parks.dpaw.wa.gov.au/site/echidna-chasm

On our way back to the caravan park we stopped at Kungkalanyi Lookout – this gave a great view of a small part of the burnt out area of the park. I was so tired that I fell asleep in the car on the way back to the caravan park despite the very rough road.  When we got back to camp we did some sorting out and stocktaking in preparation for our departure and shop tomorrow (before tackling the Gibb River Road).

28 August - Bungle Bungle (Purnululu) National Park – walks of the Southern Section

28 August 2016 – 185 219

Bungle Bungle (Purnululu) National Park – walks of the Southern Section

This morning we drove from the Bungle Bungle Caravan Park to Purnululu National Park.
https://parks.dpaw.wa.gov.au/park/purnululu
This is 53km of challenging dirt road, this took a bit over an hour and a half.  We then signed into the National Park, even if you have a park pass you need to sign into each park each day in Western Australia; but you don’t need to sign out.  From the Visitor Information Centre we drove to the Southern Section of the park (27km more of rough dirt).  https://parks.dpaw.wa.gov.au/site/piccaninny-creek
We arrived just before 10am and set out on our walk.  We visited The Domes, which are like what I expected of the Bungle Bungles, individual domes of striped rock.  We then walked to Cathedral Gorge, which, even in this extreme dry, still had water in it.  This would be amazing to see (although far too dangerous on foot) with water flowing down the waterfall during the wet season.

We then continued to Piccaninny Creek Lookout and The Window which each gave different views of the Bungle Bungle Range. If you were stopping here, it is probably not worth the extra walk to The Window from Piccaninny Creek Lookout.  However, we continued on into the far end of Whip Snake Gorge – this was lovely and cool and quite pretty.  We enjoyed a picnic lunch in the cool shade.  We then headed out back to the carpark.  All up, this was 14.3km and took four hours.  This was an extremely exposed walk, in that we were walking on either bare sand or bare rock ninety percent of the time, with heat reflecting off the surrounding rock faces and no shade.  Despite the large quantities of water we were carrying, we had used all of it up and were keen to reach the car and have more to drink – lesson learnt and no harm done – take even more water if there is no protection from the sun, and it is worth getting up really early tomorrow.  When we got home we all enjoyed a shower – mine was somewhat interrupted as the power went out multiple times, resulting in the water stopping and each time I had to wrap my towel around me and go and find someone to turn it back on, of course this hadn’t started until the shampoo was in my hair!!  Eventually I ended up clean.  Alarm is set for an earlier start tomorrow as we plan another long walk.

27 August - Great Northern Highway

27 August 2016 – 184 770

Great Northern Highway

We woke early and packed up this morning.  We headed a little out of town to ORDCO for fuel, at 125.4 instead of 136.9.  Then we drove south to the Bungle Bungle Caravan Park and set up the van.   https://bunglebunglecaravanpark.com.au/
We had a quick lunch and then headed south almost to Halls Creek, where we visited Drew’s Aunt, Uncle and cousins.  Then an hour’s drive back to the caravan park and bed.  There are only 12 other van/tents in the Bungle Bungle Caravan Park tonight.

23 August - Keep River National Park and Goodbye Northern Territory

23 August 2016 - 184 198

Keep River National Park and Goodbye Northern Territory

Up and away to Keep River National Park. https://nt.gov.au/leisure/parks-reserves/find-a-park/find-a-park-to-visit/keep-river-national-park We headed for the far end of the national park to do the Jarnem Walk first (8km, 2.5 hours).  This was beautiful, there were a great variety of different areas of vegetation.  The rocks were amazing, the escarpment was a sedimentary rock with red and brown layers that were eroding at different rates – a lot like I imagine the Bungle Bungles would have been before they eroded into separate pillars.  We enjoyed a picnic lunch in the shade at the Jarnem Campground.  We then headed off to do the Jenamoom Walk (3km, 1 hour), this was not particularly interesting and was quite hot with lots of biting insects. 

The next stop was the Goorrandalng Campground where we did a walk (2km, 1 hour) through stunning rock formations and a number of different vegetation types.  I found this walk amazing, the colours of the rocks against the sky and vegetation were stunning.  Our last walk for the day was to Ginger’s Hill, this was a small circular stone wall with branches over the top; these were built throughout the area by aboriginal peoples, and were used for catching birds of prey. 

Overall, Keep River National Park is an awesome small park with great campgrounds - it's only downside is its distance from major centres, otherwise I think this would be on the must do list for more people.  Next we headed west to the border.  We had to stop and open up the car and van for the border quarantine check, and then on to Kununurra.  We are booked in to Kimberleyland Holiday Park for the next two nights and may extend this once we decide what we wish to do in the area.  Once we had set up the van, we all headed off for well deserved and well desired showers.