By Adrian & Fi
After our fun at Windjana and Tunnel Creek, we were keen to do some more walking and Purnululu promised some highly rated tracks. We traversed the 53km of dirt road to our campsite within the park in the late afternoon with the rock faces turning red under the setting sun.
Echidna Gorge was a perfect option for our first day in the park, as it had been recommended as a ‘must do’ and more importantly needed to be started later in the morning to get the best light. The vertical sides of the gorge only a few meters apart made a truely etherial place where one could wonder at the forces and time that made such place. It was easy to understand the signs asking for respect as if it was a cathedral. The inevitable child calling ‘coo-EEE’ was stunned into silence when Fi warned him he might wake the sleeping baby micro bats just ahead – perhaps the only respite the parents got that day.
Later, we entertained ourselves at the ‘Fawlty Towers’ visitor centre. When they returned from lunch they explained how the internet, which had not yet reached the centre, was the only way to book the nearby campsite. There was a guest wifi which was private and a pay phone that no longer made calls so they recommended the 4 hour return trip to the highway to get reception to make a booking.
The next day we were treated to more spectacular gorge walks at the northern end of the park. It was becoming clear that the walks were a small taste of the the park and we were being carefully guided around much of the more interesting and presumably sensitive terrain. The only way to see most of the park would be from the air.
I had overheard a tour guide talk about dawn at the southern and eastern side of the park where the famous bee hive rock formations are. We made the risky choice to drive, pre-coffee, to the southern end of the park where we enjoyed the early morning light whilst making breakfast.
After a good breakfast, we walked along the river bed a few km to Whip Snake Gorge which was largely deserted and tranquil. A large number of cane toads rotted alongside the path, Appian Way style, although we didn’t discover how they met their demise. On our return trip from Whip Snake Gorge, we met the tour groups thronging into the popular Cathedral Gorge, which was accessed via a small detour at the end of our much larger walk . It was indeed reminiscent of any European cathedral, full of a hundred well dressed quietly spoken camera snapping visitors. Not really our thing, we exited quietly and returned to the car park. Interestingly, we found out, Cathedral Gorge was used in the famous Qantas advertisement where they put the kids dressed in cleanly pressed white robes into famous landmarks to sing “Still call Australia home”. Apt.
Next stop was the airfield for our aerial adventure. Fi had experienced the helicopter flight some 20 years earlier, and that was enough of an excuse for me to get the front seat. As we had suspected, the vast majority of the park is off limits to the public. There looks to be some fantastic walking for the more adventurous with great access into the gorges along dry creek beds. However; I suspect if I was responsible for a land full of ancient paintings, tranquil gorges and sacred burial sites I would keep the coo-eee’s, the generators and the 4WDs to their own little corner.
Our longest stopover came to an end and we headed north for civilisation, vaccines, provisioning and a dose of nostalgia.
