29 - Porcupine Gorge National Park

Entry 29 – 3rd October 2016

We were ready to head south into cooler areas, deciding for our next experience to visit Porcupine Gorge National Park located about 70 kilometres north of Hughenden Queensland. 

From Undara to Porcupine Gorge N.P. was a drive of about 400 kilometres south, then 250 kilometres west. We took three days to get to Hughenden camping two nights at different roadside stopovers along the way. The third night we stayed at Hughenden’s R.V. camping area which was alongside the town’s showgrounds and happened to be closer to the centre of town than the town’s caravan parks. 

It was Steve’s last week in his fifties and Porcupine Gorge was to be our location when he was to continue life in his sixties. We had accelerated our travel time to get to Hughenden quicker than we would normally; as there was to be a special cultural event one evening which we thought might be a nice experience as an additional item to celebrate Steve’s birthday. 

The Queensland Ballet was touring through Queensland’s regional countryside to provide a Ballet experience for country people, titled “TUTUS ON TOUR” and it just happened to be at Hughenden for one night. We had never been to the ballet and we were looking forward to this special experience. We put on some neat attire and walked up the road to the town hall where we mingled with a large number of local people. There were so many cute little girls who had been dressed up by their mothers in ballerina attire. 

It was definitely one of those cultural experiences for us, an enjoyable event but we couldn’t see ourselves paying hundreds of dollars to attend the “ballet,” in the near distant future. Sadly photographs or any form of recording was prohibited. An opportunity missed for a unique photo bomb picture.

Watched all 4 of these ladies floating on air around the stage.

Early morning we dawdled along heading to Porcupine Gorge N.P. enjoying the scenery, stopping off to view several points of interest along the way taking about 3 hours to complete the 70 kilometre drive. The campground was located in a very remote, undeveloped location with a beautiful savanna plains setting amongst trees and spinifex grass. Our camp site comprised of a fine gravel surface, a table with bench seating, a fire ring and an uninterrupted view of endless bush land. Late afternoon kangaroos would appear in the distance grazing and we watched parrots flittering about feeding in the tree canopy. For us it was a divine setting.

Porcupine Gorge N.P. extends for about 25 kilometres along Porcupine Creek, including surrounding areas of open woodland and grassland. The creek has carved an impressive canyon, revealing multi-coloured sandstone and sedimentary rock formations. It has been described as Australia’s ‘Little Grand Canyon.’ The eroding action of the creek has also created the “Pyramid,” an isolated monolith of multi-coloured sandstone rising from the gorge floor shaped as the name suggests.

Early during our first evening we experienced a heavy downpour of rain, helping to drop the overnight temperature below 20 degrees, providing welcomed good sleeping conditions.

We set off in the morning to complete the Gorge walk with a beautiful ambient air temperature, the coolest we had experienced in our last 6 months of travel at about 18 degrees C. We had a beautiful blue cloudless sky, walking through a picturesque bush setting with glimpses of the striking gorge below and at first sight we easily identified the monolith aptly named the “Pyramid”. 

The walk was graded with a moderate level of fitness required, zig zagging down a steep-ish gradient. This also included about 600 steps down to the base of the gorge, (our count tallied 634 steps). Once at the base of the gorge there was no defined track and we spent a couple of hours scampering over rocks and through sandy areas exploring the base of the gorge.

Our bodies felt the exertion needed returning back up the track, including the 600 steps required back to the camp ground.

We did have a little lie down on our initial return to the caravan. Otherwise our bodies seemed to have coped with the exertion OK. 

During our travels over the last month someone had mentioned about the number of steps required to traverse to the base of this gorge. The knowledge of requiring around 1000 steps had given us another ulterior motive to experience the beauty of this national park. 

For a memorable experience to celebrate Steve turning 60 this year we had decided to climb Sydney Harbour Bridge. Our research showed this involved the requirement of about 1300 steps during the allocated time period. This had given us an added incentive to increase our level of fitness to satisfactorily complete this undertaking. 

We now had a month to fine tune the step in our legs before the day would be upon us to experience this special event climbing Sydney Harbour Bridge. 

We finally experienced a delightful day’s temperature on our second day with a maximum temperature displayed by the caravan’s thermometer of 28 C. Followed with a good night’s sleep. It seemed our decision to travel south a bit was the correct choice to soothe our comfort level. 

The day of Steve’s birthday we returned to the base of the gorge continuing with the conditioning of our legs. The temperature was back up into the high 30’s which set the scene for a dip in the fresh waters of Porcupine Creek at the base of the ‘Pyramid.’

For Steve’s birthday tea we cooked a camp fire pot roast. When camping and especially in the bush, a camp fire provides an enchanting focal point enhancing the atmosphere of a “bush camp”. We were in one of those locations with a divine bush setting, flames flickering from a camp fire, the camp fire pot loaded with good tucker all enhancing a great location for the birthday boy to transverse from his 50’s to commence life in his 60’s.

 

We decided on a cheese cake for the birthday cake but were unable to eat any more food after eating the roast so it was birthday cake first before the main meal the following day. Steve’s only comment about the cheese cake; “It’s not as nice as I remember my mother’s cheese cakes.”

The following evening we cooked a damper and some potatoes in the fire to complement the leftover roast. As normal Mary excelled with her culinary delights and we had enough meat and damper to keep us going for a few days.

If this was what life was going to be like in the sixties; life was looking pretty good.