Purnululu National Park, WA (Bungle Bungles)

Bit of catching up to do now that we have our electronical umbilical cord reconnected.

Drove out across the Kimberly toward Halls Creek and Purnululu NP. Four Hundred kilometres in five hours, stopping for a cup of tea and break at Mary Pool, 100km west of Halls Creek. Mary Pool is a free camp, a few km off the road on the banks of the Mary River. We had heard on our way across that it was full the night we passed by – a 100 vans jammed in and two toilets. We were interested to see what the fuss was about, apart from being free, being 200km from Fitzroy Crossing and not being in Halls Creek. It’s quite a good spot actually, early birds get a spot on the banks of the dry river bed, the rest get a tree if they’re lucky and a bare patch of ground if not. There were 30 odd vans there already at 11am and more coming in all the time. Some looked like they had been there a while, others, like us, came in for a cuppa and then shot through. The road works we had encountered on our way east of Halls Creek we now came across on the western side. We slid into Halls Creek Shell service station to top up the fuel as one does out here, grabbed a few ice creams and kept going.

Made it into Purnululu where we had booked on our way through last time, even had the same spot under a tree and near enough to the amenities. As we pulled in it was 30 degrees, a good bit warmer than Fitzroy. After we had our lunch and had settled down in the shade for a bit of a read, the caretaker went about turning lawn sprinklers on, so Judy and I decided to go and stand under them, much to the amusement of the rest of the park residents. Damn refreshing it was too!

I sat down and picked up my Flynn of the Inland by Ion Idriess and started reading at random. I haven’t touched it since last year, but here I am reading all about the incident that was the catalyst for the Inland missions leading to the Flying Doctor. A young fellow had been thrown from his horse 300 miles (480km) from Halls Creek. They took him on a cart into town over many agonizing days. The Telegraph man had a little medical experience and so used the ‘wire’ to talk to a doctor in Perth about 2500km away by bush track. They operated on the patient but complications set in. The doctor made a mercy dash: steamer to Derby, 3 days; big powerful car to Fitzroy Crossing, a day and a half (we took 3 hours); a smaller lighter car to Halls Creek, 5 days (we had just done that trip in 5 hours), and the last 30km on horseback as the car had disintegrated. Makes you stop and think about how times have changed and just how hard life was for our pioneer forefathers.

Day 2 – Tour

Oh no, not another tour by luxury 4x4 bus. At the appointed time of 7am, sure enough a brand new luxury 4x4 bus turned up! This bus took us down the 53km torture track to the Purnululu NP - in just 2 hours. The guide gave us all the horror stories as we approached each of the crossings: Apollo rental camper broken completely in half, ‘Wicked’ camper vans used as filling when they re-graded the crossin, a backpacker Ford station wagon drowned in the river and was being towed out by another backpacker cheapie, whole platoons of 4x4s getting bogged. Personally, I thought his 25kph was a bit exaggerated, but hey, all I had to do was sleep.

From the information centre, its another 20km or so further around to the southern end of the Bungles, where we had morning tea and then set out on a few of the various walks on offer. We went up to Cathedral Gorge, and I slipped out to Picaninny Lookout and back via the Domes. The domes are fascinating , as is the whole geology of the area. The rocks are sandstone laid down a zillion years ago in an ancient ocean. The bands are caused as water seeps through the different layers: some exude iron oxide to give the red, the grey is from cyanobacteria that grow on the other band to give grey. This outer skin is quite thin and fragile, underneath the sandstone is white and very soft, so it erodes fairly quickly.

Snap of the day:

Domes. Purnululu NAP, WA