Day 78: Tue 12 Jul

Day 78: Tue 12 Jul - Lawn Hill

It was fresh when we woke this morning; 7.7 fresh reaching a balmy 23 deg by mid afternoon. By late morning with sunshine, it starting warming up to become another lovely sunny cloudless day, but a moderate wind by mid afternoon cooled things down again. The wind eased again by the evening. Although the park was very full last night, it was quiet after 9:00pm, and we had a very peaceful night sleep. It was so good that we both slept in until 7:15am. We were meant to leave at 8:00am with Greg and Wendy to walk a few of the tracks in the gorge, but decided to not hold them up, and leave to do our own thing when we were ready. We eventually got away at 8:30am driving the 10km down to the Boodjamulla national park entrance, where we initially had trouble finding the path across the creek to the shorter walking tracks that we decided to walk today (Island Stack, Wild Dog Dreaming and Botanical walk). There are two main routes, the shorter one to the right being the one we chose to do today, the longer one to the left we intended to do tomorrow. Signage to the one to the right was almost non-existent, but apparently the access bridge was washed away in recent heavy rains and there was no alternative path across the creek other than to work it out for yourself and cross wherever you felt most comfortable. While I was considering options, Noel tripped and fell losing some bark of her hand and knees on the rough limestone rocks - nothing serious apart from broken skin, soreness and some bruising. The water was flowing quite fast, and Noel was not prepared to attempt a crossing, so she returned to the start of the trails and ended up walking to the Indarri Falls and Lookout in the opposite direction, which I will do as part of a longer walk tomorrow. Meanwhile, I removed my shoes and crossed the creek through water, stepping across the limestone rocks and a fallen tree to get to the other side. Another guy named Paul from the Sunshine Coast (Buderim) was watching, and decided to leave his wife behind too, and follow me across to walk the three tracks with me. Shortly after we met a third guy named Aaron, who also joined us for the walks. As it unfolded, Aaron lives in Canberra - we all enjoyed each other’s company and some good old male bonding. After completing the main trails, which each had magnificent views, we returned to the gorge entrance by 12:15pm to go our own way. Here I met up again with Noeleene again, having just completed her walk, and we returned to the van for lunch and a quiet afternoon doing a few running repairs. Number one on the priority list was reducing the tyre pressure in my car and caravan tyres for return trip over the rough corrugated roads, hopefully limiting any further damage to the van. After a short stroll down to the office where there is some limited telephone and internet service, I sent a few messages, made a couple of calls and downloaded emails. Back to the van for sunset drinks with Greg and Wendy, then we had home made pizza in the van - very tasty. I’m amazed at how well eat out of our van - more-so given that we are currently not connected to 240v power or water. Tomorrow, Noel has no intention of returning to the gorge, but I will to walk the remaining 9km of tracks to left along the gorge to Indarri Falls and lookout, Duwadarri lookout, and the Upper Gorge lookout. All going well, a fourth 3.5km track out and back along the Constance Range as well.