Day 53: Purnululu National Park
I was pretty excited about today. I've wanted to visit the Bungle Bungle Range since I was an undergrad geology student and read about the beehive formations. It has only taken me 35+ years to get here!
The road into the park is known for being a pretty rough track with lots of corrugations, river crossings, and steep road dips. It is 53km from the highway to the visitors centre which can take between 1.5-3 hours. As we knew this was going to be a big day, we were up early and into the park as soon as we could. It was rough, and yes there were a few river crossings, but it was not as bad as we thought it was going to be...that said it did take us 2 hours to get to the visitors centre. On the way into the park we ticked over 10,000km since we left Hobart - a big milestone!
From there we headed south to the Piccaninny trail head at the Bungle Bungle Range (45 min & 27km later). We started on The Domes loop and then continued into Cathedral Gorge. It was amazing to walk between some of the beehive domes along the sandy creek beds. Theo stopped at every sandy section of the trail to make little sand hill men.
The walk into Cathedral Gorge was also along a dry creek bed but here it was bedrock rock rather than sand. When we got to the end of Cathedral Gorge we got to listen to one of the local indigenous woman singing and playing clapsticks for her tour group. The acoustics were so beautiful and the song amazing. After hearing that we all walked around the small lake at the end of the gorge speaking in whispers as anything louder seemed out of place.
While exploring the end of the gorge we found a really cool little puddle, that turned from green to clear depending on the angle that you looked at it from. I assume it was to do with how algae in the water reflected the light(?). We could also hear a frog hanging out near the canyon walls but could not work out where it was hiding.
Back at the car we had a quick lunch then drove to Echidna Chasm carpark at the northern end of the park (1 hour, 15 min & 45km later). It was getting late in the day so we quickly headed into the Chasm. The rocks in the northern park of the park are very different - being conglomerates rather than sandstone. There were a few Livistona Palms near the beginning of the track before the Chasm got too narrow for any vegetation. Eventually we could touch each side of the wall while walking through the middle. We missed being here in the middle of the day when the sun lights up the walls but there was still a few glowing red rocks for us to see. On the way back to the car we ran up to Osmand Lookout for one last look of the northern range before heading back to Spring Creek Camp.
It was a very full day and with the sun setting at 5:15pm we ended up getting back to camp after dark. But we did get a great view of the full moon rising while driving back to the highway.
