9 July 2013
Today we had to kill some time because the tyre man was not going to be available until 1pm. From Mt Barnett camping you can walk 100m to a swimming hole which we did yesterday arvo, it was bloody freezing but refreshing! Beautiful spot. You can also do a 2.5km one way walk to Manning Gorge and Falls which is what we were going to do this morning to fill in some time.
If you go on this walk take plenty of water, swimmers, camera, towel, sunscreen, I know this because we thought it was just an easy walk and we didn't take anything other than a towel! The start of the walk is interesting as you need to either swim across the creek or there is a little ferry boat...which is a tinny attached to a rope that you can pull yourself across the creek, we took this option as I had my sneakers on for the walk. We teamed up with a family and between the 3 adults we hammered across the creek, was a good interesting start to the walk!
Now the actual walk was tough! The heat was pretty extreme and then the length felt like forever and as you get closer it goes downhill rocky, then uphill rocky, then downhill rocky, then uphill rocky then you see the oasis! This place is magic! One of the best spots we have been too. There is a beautiful pool of water which we were about to dive into when we could hear more voices around the gorge so we kept walking. And glad we did as it opened up into another big pool of water with a beautiful waterfall flowing into the pool. Now I would show you what this looked like but I didn't take a a camera so google will have to show you what it looks like...
Anyway we dived in for a beautiful swim, swam from the edge to where the water was cascading down, sat in a cave for a while watching the water fall and then swam back through the water falling and over to the edge again. We were buggered by the end of it but it was soooo worth it. I would walk it 100 times over to have another swim in there, was awesome! And it's not one that's talked about a lot on the Gibb, so definitely make sure you find it and do the walk!
That took up most of our morning so when we made it back to camp, we both had huge gulps of water and then packed up and headed off towards the tyre shop.
Made it to Imantji aboriginal community which has a shop and is where the tyre shop is. Tyre man was still not back from his morning duties so we headed into the shop. We had underestimated the food we had needed on this trip so as the shop supplies groceries, we thought why not spend another ridiculous amount of money on food! Haha we had a handful of stuff each which did include a couple of BBQ packs and it was $100! Ouch! After supplying another fellow traveller with some hose clamps that Joel happened to have in his tools (we should open a shop!) and eating an ice cream in the boiling hot sun, tyre man pulls into his workshop.
We rolled what was left of the Mickey Thompson tyre into the workshop and picked out a new spare. Neville (tyre man) led us to his waiting room which considering the look of the workshop it was a nicely set out little room with TV, books, photos of the wet season and Kimberley's, so we kept entertained while Nev sorted out the new tyre for us. Nev tells us we were going too fast for the tyre pressure we were running, we should have not been going over 80km and we were hooning at 100km so the tyre got too hot and fell to pieces! $400 later we are on our way! Ouch again!
By this time it was close to 4pm and luckily our camp spot was only a few k away at silent grove. There was a ranger on site collecting fees and the place was packed! There is so many people around at the moment and because there is limited choice of places to stay they get very crowded! But we managed to find a patch of dirt and setup camp, by the time we had dinner we were absolutely knackered from the day and headed in for an early night.
Bell gorge is 10km up the road so we will walk this in the morning.
Carly & Joel
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