After spending a few nights in the Mount Moffatt
camping area of Carnarvon NP we travelled "around the block, a few
hundred kilometres" to the more popular, commercialized section
of Carnarvon National Park at Carnarvon Gorge. No camping outside of school holidays
is permitted in this area of the national park and we had to stay in the packed
caravan park of Takarakka Bush Resort located 4 kilometres out of the national park from
where we had to drive into the national park for the spectacular walks.
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| Mt Moffatt - The Chimneys |
On our first morning we were up at sunlight and commenced
our main planned walk from the national park at 7.30 am. It was a chilly 6 C
and remained quite cool for the first couple of hours walking under a beautiful
tree canopy.
The hike starts at a creek crossing where you are
required to stone hop across the flowing water. Mary was half way across when
she stepped the wrong way and ended up stuck with her posterior pointing up
creek, while facing downwards with both hands hanging onto her hiking stick
perched out over the water leaving her in imminent danger of crashing belly
first into the drink. Steve dashed across the rocks to her aid, rescuing her
from the pending danger.
We were grateful to have avoided disaster before we had
even commenced our walk but there was another immediate issue that required a
strategy, how to deal with the other 19 creek crossing to our planned
destination and then the return trip retracing our tracks. For the second creek
crossing Mary utilized two hiking sticks which thankfully provided better
stability for her to successfully rock hop across the water.
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| Mary rock hopping |
Our previous visit to this area was some 23 - 24 years
ago when we were younger and fitter with our 7, 5 & 3 year old children. We
had completed this hike with the aid of a stroller where our youngest would
joyously sprint across the creek crossings and then collapse into the stroller
till the next creek crossing.
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| Steve rock hopping |
Our aim was hopefully to be able to retrace our hike
without the kids but with much older feeling bodies. What we didn’t factor was
that our memory had somewhat faded and instead of the 14 kilometre hike we
completed with the kids we ended up hiking about 23 kilometres which included
hundreds of extra steps due to a brain malfunction.
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| Wards Canyon |
It was a very slow painful return hike back to our
vehicle some 10 hours after departure. It was fantastic scenery but a bodily
experience we don’t wish to replicate ever!
Another evening we participated in an astronomy session where we got to view
some areas of our galaxy through a telescope with the evening finale viewing
Saturn. This was another enjoyable experience for us.
Once again we were reminded how we prefer to camp away
from caravan parks. As per usual we were packed in with a neighbour who snored
very loud during the night and at times we could clearly hear their flatulence,
“robust pop offs.”
Carnarvon Gorge scenery and atmosphere was great for the
soul but traumatic for the feet and legs.
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| Mickey Creek |
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