It had been a noisy and mostly sleepless night in the caravan park. It only takes one group of noisy people to make the difference and we had had more than that. But we had a booking to be at Gieke Gorge for 9:30 so got our bones out of bed and got ourselves showered.
We arrived at Gieke Gorge with enough time to read some of the information boards before the cruise.
The boat holds about 70. This morning there were 17 of us- so plenty of space. It cruises gently up the Fitzroy River and offers a chance to see the ancient cliff faces. These are of the same Devonian reef formed rock as Windjana Gorge. When washed clean by the wet seasons it shows as a beige/ white/pink colour. The level of past wet seasons shows clearly about 18m above the level of the water.
The gorge is eroded by chemicals formed from the water which eat away at the crevices, forming lots of holes and gaps in the rock.
From the quiet boat you also get a good look at the freshwater crocs
and maybe some noisy red tailed black cockatoos. The ranger also gives a bit of a commentary on the area including the significance to traditional owners.
I had been hoping to do the afternoon tour and see the sunset on the rocks of the gorge, but the timing didn’t lend itself to that. We had the benefit of less crowds instead. (Al and Zita did the sunset one the night before and did capture some lovely colours but had to share with a tour).
There are a couple of walks here. I did one and a bit and ambled along the riverbank a bit looking for birds. Trev rested up after his rough sleepless night.
When I returned to the shady shelter to have a cuppa I realised that the wifi connection to log in to do a COVID check via parks was still available and we made use of it, uploading our blogs from the holiday much faster than on the town 3G in Fitzroy Crossing. We also took the chance and make a Sunday Afternoon call to Ben and Jasmine to catch up on news while we could.
We headed back through Fitzroy Crossing, stopping for a hamburger in a slightly dodgy roadhouse ( and wishing we had opted for a pie instead at the Shell) The hamburger was good. Hygiene standards not so good.
We headed back to the Boab quarry that we had checked out the previous day and found a quiet little spot just big enough for us around the corner from the Colwells and some noisy people from the previous night. We enjoyed a dip in the lovely cool water in the quarry along with some of the other campers.
The place filled up as we got towards dark. We had a quick tea (chicken and SALAD-what a treat) before packing it in early and crashing. Trev got pretty much 12 hours of sleep. We were much happier after that.
Luvapuzzle 