Day 166

12 July 2013

Big drive this morning to the Purnululu (say that three times quick) National Park which is home to the Bungle Bungles.

We had to stop for fuel again at Halls Creek and Joel decided to get some beers as he had run out (: o shock horror!). He came out of the bottle o with a weird carton in his hands and explained that they only sell light beer in Halls Creek so he had no choice but to get xxxx light cans in a 24 pack (weird also normally come in 30 pack) and he paid $55 for it!

Made it to the national park and noticed there was a sign saying bookings essential...oops should have done a bit more research. Good old Optus was being consistent with their shit coverage around Australia so we had no phone service again! Called into the Bungle Bungle caravan park which is just on the road to the park and used their phone to make a booking. For future reference you book online for this national park campsite. Anyway camp spot paid for, now a 56km dirt road into the park and campsite. Funny thing was that after being on this road for a while we thought it was worse than the Gibb! Haha there was some sharp rocks and big dips, but the thing that really slowed you down was the constant windiness and up down of the road!

Made it to the visitor centre, have to call in here for camp passes, but is a nice little shop to have a look at too. Got our little map and pass and we headed the extra 11km to the campground. We got their late afternoon and thought we would squeeze in a couple of walks after setting up camp so headed straight for campsite. Driving around looking for our number 22... 24, 23, 22....hmm there is a dirty big camper trailer sitting on 22? Headed to the camp host station to make it their problem and they said they didn't know and if we went for our walks and watched the sunset, they will have worked out what is going on.

So drove another 5km to the carpark where all the walks go from. Now there is two sets of walks, one from the north and one from the south, we were camped in the south so we went for these walks, but you can also camp in the north and do those walks (there is about half an hour between north and south). We didn't have a lot of time because time was against us but we did the dome loop which takes you around the base of the domes that make up the bungle bungles and the cathedral gorge.

Domes are really cool, they look like beehives with their shape but also the stripes around the domes in orange and black. There are signs everywhere stating how fragile they are and this is evident in big huge chunks missing out of domes and the chunk lying on the ground below! The Cathedral Gorge was huge, it echoes when you are inside of it and the walls are so high. It is so hard to describe these things we see in words! Tried to get some good photos but you can't capture it all in one shot.

Walks done we had just enough time to get to the sunset viewing area to see the sun setting on a bungle bungle range. The sun lights up the bungle bungle in a bright orange, reddy colour and there was lots of people watching and trying to capture it with their camera. We really needed a bigger lens on or be a lot closer to get a good shot but it was still nice.

Made it back to camp and pulled into camp hosts to see what they had come up with for us. Turns out it was a computer glitch and the people on 22 were legitimate. He then asked us if we care about being near people and we were like noooo that's fine. So he ended up putting us in the tour operators section which are these big huge camp sites for tour buses with their own campfire and toilets etc...so we had the best spot and to top it off he even bought us firewood! Turns out that computer glitch worked in our favour!

Nice night by the camp fire, tomorrow Kununurra to pick up shutz!

Carly & Joel

 

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