Morrows Westward Adventure: Purnululu - The Bungle Bungles (May 15-19)

After an overnight stop in a wayside gravel carpark with very modern pit toilets we headed into Purnululu World Heritage National Park. 53km of 4x4 only road, with a few creek crossings or rather big puddles. The Bungle Bungle Range is made up of sandstone deposited 360 million years ago. Water erosion and weathering in the last 20 million years has carved out the domes, chasms and gorges this area is famous for.

We chose to camp in the northern part of the Park, Kurrajong campground as it does not allow generators or tour groups. It has clean pit toilets and bore water. The whole time we were here, there were no more than 5 or 6 other campers in the 100 or so sites. We couldn’t imagine it full. We have been pleasantly surprised as to how few travellers we have encountered overall . It is a nice change to be camped on dry grass rather than red dirt. It amazes us how the red dust gets into absolutely everything.

Spent our first afternoon exploring the dry creek beds (lots of dead cane toads). A little while back a guy came in here and killed 45,000 cane toads in 2 months. We were disappointed to learn they were even in this area. We did our bit by eradicating a few from Whip Snake Gorge with heavy rocks.

The boys collected lots of round rocks and have continued a made up rock rolling game not unlike Bocce with an elaborate scoring system for the few days we have been here.

It is taking us some time to adjust to Western Australian time (2 hours behind Victoria). There is no twilight here. Come 5.30pm it is dark and by 5.30am it is completely light. So we are in bed early and up early and heading off for our day of exploring, which is a good thing because come lunchtime it is very hot, the heat off the rocks is baking. By early afternoon we are usually back at camp relaxing. Even had a couple of very warm solar showers. The weather is beautiful, cool mornings, blue sky and sunshine all day long. Don’t mean to make our family and friends back in Victoria jealous! The nightly sky shows are just spectacular.

We have spent our days here walking along the Escarpment into Echidna Chasm, trudging up sandy creek beds and rock hopping to The Domes, Cathedral Gorge and Piccaninny Creek and then a longer 10km walk into Whip Snake Gorge. Not to mention the Kungkalanayi Lookout with the awesome 360 degree views of the setting sun. Words and photos just do not convey the beauty of this area, the colours on the rocks, the immense heights of the ranges and deep gorges and chasms. It would be amazing to see this area with some water in it. They have had a very average wet season. We even found a rare Splendida Green Frog which is only found in this part of the world. Also watched a dingo wander up the creek bed by our camp. Heard him and another howling to each other. Very eerie.

Off to Kununurra tomorrow to restock before starting our journey along the Gibb River Road.