The boys were up super excited to check their traps and I have been led to believe that a fox had visited overnight and extracted the fish finger from a berley cage they had found and then tangled its self in the twine and miraculously escaped....amazing
We were on the road by 9am and were looking forward to
visiting a local cave then heading to our next camp where we could have a nice
relaxing Sunday afternoon.
The instructions of how to find “Stockyard Gully Cave” were
pretty scant at best. There was some info at the camp and a one liner in the
tourist brochure but none of our digital maps would take us there. We ended up finding the turn off pretty easily and headed in along a good dirt road. About 5km
before the cave the dirt abruptly finished, as we entered the NP, and it became
very sandy and a good deal rougher. I switched it into 4WD as a precaution but
we made it through pretty easily.
We have been checking out animal tracks regularly and the track in was alive with them. Foxes, echidnas and heaps of others that we only guessed. Anybody willing to have a go at what the one below is?
We walked to the caves and had a great time walking through
them. The best part was that there was no tour guide and we pretty much had the
whole place to our self. In the middle of the cave, which is about 400m long, I
made the boys turn of their headlamps and stand perfectly still. The stillness,
silence and blackness was amazing. We got to the other end and as it was pretty
warm outside and nice and cool in the cave, rather than doing the full loop we
just turned around and walked back through the cave. On the way the boys
discovered a bit of an off shoot that they were pretty keen to investigate but
Jack was to worried about bush rangers hiding in there to continue...
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| In pitch blackness - cameras don't like taking photos |
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| Watching out for bush rangers in their off shoot! |
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| The northern entrance was pretty Huge! |
We headed
back to the truck and kept driving along the road, rather than turning around
and going back the way we came. Somehow we thought that the road was going to
be better that way. We ran into Anthony et al just as they were leaving and
they said that the track was surprisingly rough. Oh how I wish I had stopped to
ask HOW rough. We were about 5 minutes down the track when the trees and bushes
started to hedge the road in. Usually this is no problem as every bodies vehicle
is about the same with. Our van however is about 30cm wider on each side so
poor old Gator was coping an absolute hammering. If that wasn’t bad enough
about 15 minutes further on the sandy track became very sandy, and then 10
minutes later it was even sandier and then even sandier....and yep I was bogged.
First time out was pretty easy I just shoveled a bit of
sand away from in front of the tyres. The second time I did the same but let
the tires down , the third time it was starting to get really hot and I was in
a lather of sweat that made every grain of sand stick to me. Add to that the bushes
along the side of the track ALL had extremely sharp spines on them and to get to the tires I
had to push through them or crawl under the truck or van in sand that was about 40oC. Now I was really
having fun. The third and fourth bogs were about 3m apart and my rear diff was
starting to hit the sand so it was time to bring the max track out! I spent
about 15 minutes prepping this one as while I still had a few trumps up my
sleeve I was hoping to leave them there. I took off with De pushing at the back
and I drove a few hundred meters to a solid area, then returning back to De who
was still trying to dig one of the max tracks out! Oh the fun.
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| After we had escaped I stopped at one of the few good spots on the track to get a pic |
We kept heading along and Anthony managed to catch up to us.
We had a couple of really close calls to getting bogged again but managed to
keep moving.....JUST. As we got further along the sand gave way, Yeay, but it was
replaced by limestone rocks that stick out of the road, sometimes 20cm+ making
the next 20 minutes bloody miserable at best, as I watched Gator bouncing of
rocks, a number of times her wheels leaving terra firma. We finally made it,
much to my relief, and we stopped up the road to inflate the tires.
Gator had
preformed magnificently on a track that should never have been tackled by a
caravan and the only ‘damage’ was the fridge latch had undone spreading its
contents liberally across the floor!
We headed into Port Denison, while I tried to rehydrate
myself. I should have got on the scales as I would have sweated a few kgs off I’m
sure! We had our traditional Sunday Chip Butties for lunch and after I did a
bit of work headed into the hills behind Geraldton to Ellendale Pool. The
swimming hole has magnificent rock cliffs on the other side but due to the lack
of rain over the last few months we were advised not to swim in it.......bugger!
We were way behind schedule so I whipped up a quick dinner while I tried in
vain to get the 20/20 cricket on the TV. Digital TV is sooooo bloody
frustrating!
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