I checked the weather last night and it is supposed to be
32oC by 10am so with a 9km walk in front of us we were up and going reasonably
early and were the first to hit the trail at 7:45 (after a 40 minute drive
along some of the worst roads I have ever seen – thanks WA National Parks).
After a 500m walk we made it to ‘Natures Window’ which is a
big hole in a rock that happens to have placed its self with a pretty
spectacular view in the back ground.
With the knowledge of the temperature we
moved on pretty quickly. The first 2kms of the walk followed the top of the ridge
with the views down to the gorge the Murchison River has carved out pretty
spectacular. We then descended down, pretty quickly, to the river bank. For the
next 5km we walked along the edge of the river some of it was along a sandy,
just like a beach, but there were also some really trick patches where we had
to get down on our hands and knees crawling across rocky outcrops.
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| Note he direction of the arrow. |
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| Coming out of following the sign! |
The other
side of the river was pretty spectacular with it rising 50, 60 or 70m sometimes
straight out of the water. The walls of the gorge were spectacular, the reds
and whites of the rocks starkly contrasting against each other in the bright
sunlight.
Another feature of the walk was the wildlife. While we saw
kangaroos, wild goats, the usual lizards etc the thing that amazed us the most
was the flies! There were millions of the pesky little buggers! While I
attracted my fair share De, in particular her hat, seemed to be like a target
for them. The good thing was that if you didn’t disturb them they seemed to be
quite content to just come along for the ride. It added a new dimension to bush
walking where you had to be careful not to brush up against a low hanging
branch or the like as this caused them to all to take flight at once, buzzing
around your eyes, ears, nose and mouth. I think these little buggers would even
test that Dalai Lama’s love for all things!
The sun had really started to heat up as we climbed the
final kilometre back up out of the gorge. We took a quick break on the way back
up to look to the east, knowing if we travelled the 3831kms in that
exact line we would end up back at our house. We were directly on the other side of the
continent!
We climbed the last 500m back to the truck and in order to
minimise the number of flies that made it into the cab we had to ‘dust’ the
flies of each other and then dive into the truck slamming the door behind. It
would have looked very comical to anybody who was watching!
Just up the road was another lookout ‘Z Bend’ which I was
keen to have a look at. But with a 1.2k walk to get there I was on my lonesome for this one, but in the end it was worth it!
We headed back into town and hooked up Gator and headed
north. Things are a fair way apart in this neck of the woods and the only thing
we saw for the next 3 hours was....nothing. Oh, hang on there was the entrance
to Nerran Nerran station and the two roadhouses but other than it was the same
scrub.
We eventually arrived at our camp for the night, a clearing
under the radio transmitted tower 70kms to the south of Denham. It was perched
on top of the hill with a fantastic view over the head of Shark Bay. We pulled
out the chair to have a relaxing brew to finish the day and within about 5
minutes we were all back inside the van as the flies must have followed us, in
their legions!
I had managed to find a super doper special at the ‘resort’
in Monkey Mia so we were heading there for three days tomorrow. Looking forward
to that!
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