Our GO-MAD Oz Adventure: Day 164

10 July 2013

Got up early this morning to try and beat the peak hour at the gorge. Took the short drive to the start of the walk and headed off with only one other car in the carpark.

It is a 1km walk one way and there are a few tricky spots, the rocks here are the hardest parts of the walk, never just a flat walk, always up down and avoiding tripping over the rocks. Little creek crossing which I of course chose the wrong rock to step on and it wobbled around on me which sent one shoe and foot into the creek...nothing like a walk with one soaking shoe and sock!

Made it to the gorge and it was stunning too! Is there anything bad to look at here? Amazing! It is special because it has this great tier waterfall that is like perfectly cut out steps that the water flows down. It is incredible that this occurs naturally, you couldn't ask for more perfectly constructed steps if you tried! Was a how's the serenity moment and we soaked it up for a while taking pictures and listening to the water fall.

Return walk back, met a lot of other travellers so we definately just missed peak hour. Got back to the carpark and there would have been 20 cars and a tour bus so getting up early paid off!

We had to head back to Imantji because we were so wrapped up in getting the tyre fixed yesterday we forgot about the fact we had no money in our wallets (and you need it to pay the camp fees in national parks etc, unfortunately the ranger doesn't accept visa haha) so they had wifi for us to transfer money and then get it out. Cashed up we had some morning tea (kangaroo pasties) before heading back along what would be the final stretch of the Gibb (for this trip anyway)!

There was a little bit of driving today and not too much to see. As you leave Imantji area you start to run into the King Leopold Ranges which make for a very picturesque drive.

There are a few gorges along here and we checked out Lennard Gorge which is 7km off the Gibb. It's a 1.5 km walk one way and we did walk it but I wouldn't recommend it highly. I mean it was nice but from other things we have seen it was much less spectacular and the walk was painful too so unless you are super keen, skip it.

This is also where I nearly fell off a cliff so i don't rate it very highly! There was lots of really steep rocks to try and get down to the pools of water at the bottom of the gorge and Joel wanted to have a swim, so we descended down the rocks and came to one I couldn't get down, so Joel said just crawl across more and there's an easier rock here to climb down. So I do this but there was a rock jutting out at my chest height so I was trying to get my legs to go around while hugging this rock and next minute I was on my ass! The rocks are real smooth so there's nothing to hang onto and luckily fell on the most padded part of my body (my bum) and just grazed my arms a bit. Was a bit scary because there was many spots that if I had of done the same thing I would have fallen a lot further! And lucky too cuz I didn't hurt myself because you would have to get a chopper or something to come get you if you couldn't walk back, it's just in the middle of nowhere! After that I was done with Lennard Gorge so we headed back to the car.

Next was a rock that was meant to look like Queen Elizabeth ...well I think this is a bit of a stretch of the imagination or I was looking at the wrong rock but I didn't see it!

Next our last turn off the Gibb River Road : ( ....towards Windjana Gorge which is where we will camp for tonight.

Make it to the camp area about lunchtime to make sure we get a decent spot, set up camp and we had decided we would do the 7km Windjana Gorge walk tomorrow morning. However Joel got talking to a neighbour and he told us just to walk about 1km and that was enough to see everything you need to see in the gorge. So we thought we would do it this afternoon once it cooled down a bit.

The start of the walk is right at the camping area, and the walk is easy peasy compared to what we have done in the last couple of days! No rocks! Yay! This area actually used to form part of a sea (millions of years ago) and as such there is reef like rock formations left here with fossils of sea creatures etc which was interesting. As you walk in you go through a little gap between the huge gorge walls.

You then can see the water system and all the fresh water crocodile heads lying still in the water waiting to jump on someone or something! You then keep walking and there are just amazing walls of these gorges, so tall, I craned my neck back and could barely see the top of it, it was so tall. And the colour, orange, black, white, just so beautiful! Keep walking and you come to a big open space that allows you to walk on sand and on the banks are fresh water crocs sunning themselves. It was pretty cool to see them, we know they are everywhere but we haven't actually seen them in the wild yet so it was cool. Joel of course wanted to jump on one and tie its mouth, just like Steve would and hold it up saying "wow have a look at this one, in Australia we call this the freshwater crocodile!" Haha which he thinks would look great as his Facebook profile photo. I discouraged him from trying!