Today was very long,
lots of driving (about 250km) along unsealed roads with some river crossings
and shallow creeks. Rob really enjoyed that part of it, testing out our Prado
off road. There were a lot of cattle around and we scared one trio of calves out
of their hideout and onto the road in front of us. The ABS works well.
Windjana Gorge was
beautiful. It is the remnants of an ancient Devonian reef from 350 million
years ago and walking through it feels very prehistoric, especially with all
the freshwater crocodiles basking in the sun .They were still as statues except
for blinking eyes and the occasional twitch of a tail and are quite graceful
when they are swimming. The kids were amazed at how close we could get to them
and were very careful not to startle any.
The amount of
butterflies out here is remarkable and there was an amazing variety of
birdlife: corellas, Willie wagtails, finches, pigeons, black cockatoos, many
Peregrine Falcons and cockatiels. Beside an ancient sea creature fossil in the
rock, we even saw the honeycomb nests of native bees and watched them busily at
work.
We reached Tunnel
Creek and realised we had left our torches back at the caravan. Bugger. It
turned out to have not made much difference though, as Rowan and Emma were too
scared to go into the dark water for fear of crocodiles. We went part of the
way in and the younger kids splashed in the sunlit pools near the cave entrance
while Ashley and Rob explored a little further. The colours of the wet rocks
were amazing - pink and white marbled. We spotted a tiny frog, fish and heard a
fair bit of reptilian rustling in the long grass.
Our efforts to get
back to Geikie Gorge in time for the 3pm boat trip were in vain - it was
cancelled today. We will go on the early one tomorrow morning. Instead, we
hiked up the soft sand through the gorge for a view of the spectacular
contrasting rock cliffs against the blue waters of the river in the afternoon
sun. No crocodiles spotted here, but we did all get a lot of prickles in our
feet. That's what you get for not changing out of the thongs we wore at Tunnel
Creek.
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