Due to all the other distractions last night we still didn’t have a clear plan for today. The draft schedule said that we should be heading for Kennedy Range NP but the others were keen to get in more snorkelling if they could and reluctant to make the inland detour.
We met in the games room after breakfast for some serious discussion of possibilities and in the end we pulled up stumps with the others deciding not to make the trip and us torn between keeping to the plan and staying with the group.
We met again a little later in the bakery car park and we let them know that we were making a break. And so we headed inland on our own.
We said goodbye to the plantations of bananas and veg and headed east towards our first stop- Rocky Pool.
Rocky Pool is actually just a section of the Gascoyne River that has water above ground (mostly it is artesian) . Red rocks surround a long stretch of water. We parked by the water to enjoy half a vanilla slice each and a cup of tea.
Trevor took the opportunity to use the warm flattish rock to take a look underneath for a bit of a check. Everything looked pretty good under there except one tyre looked like it had lost a chunk of rubber making it a bit of a risk… so we took our time and made the most of it -changing over to the spare and stashing the injured tyre up under as spare for the moment until we can get a new one.
This route follows the Kingsford Smith Mail Run. I hadn’t realised that the famous Smithy operated a mail run out here for many years-in order to save up some cash and finance further aerial exploits. Along the way there are a number of brown signs pointing to various places on the route.
Lunch was taken at a spot called Fishy Well. There was a dam nearby, and while I got lunch ready Trev went for a walk and came back with the news that he had come across what seemed to be very large bees going in and out of the ground. We guessed that these might be the unique Dawson’s burrowing bees that we had read of. After we finished lunch we drove over to the spot where he had seen them. It was difficult to get a clear picture of what they looked like, but we think that’s what they were.
Almost 200km from Carnarvon along the dirt road we finally came to the little town of Gascoyne Junction. Here brightly coloured shelter sails peeked over fences-very cheerful. We didn’t stop to investigate further as the National Park was our goal and that was still some distance away.
We crossed the Gascoyne river and headed north and then North-west. We stopped at another of the brown tourist signs and found a cobbled road!!! Travelling beside the modern road was another old one. This was apparently built in the 1930s as part of a “ work for the dole” scheme during the depression. what a job that would have been- but it would have cut down the travel time amazingly, avoiding getting bogged for weeks.
We took a photo of the Lyons River as we crossed it-thinking of our friends John and Jeffa Lyon fondly.
Finally we arrived at Kennedy Range NP. We decided that we had a bit of time still up our sleeve, so we headed in to Honeycomb Gorge to do the short walk there.
The rocks here are pretty unusual and it was worth the walk to reach the end of the gorge and the multi-layered honeycomb rock over a pool of water.
Before heading to the campsite we also drove to the sunrise lookout – but, as expected, the rock cliffs were now in shadow and would best be seen in the morning.
The campground at Kennedy Range is a lovely little spot with a dirt track that opens up into all sorts of dead ends with pretty camping spots and lots of vegetation between. We found a nice spot on the edge of the campground, with our window facing to the dramatic ranges so we could enjoy the view even from inside. It is at the opening into the Temple Gorge-so gave us only a very short distance to go to get to our walk start tomorrow.
There was no camp host at the campground to pay fees to and no ranger there, so we were unable to pay campground fees.
Luvapuzzle 