Wed 28th Aug – Bungles – Echidna Gorge & Bath time!

It was pretty cold in the early hours of the morning as we're near the desert again - I think we'll be digging out the duvet again for tonight! Anyway, it helped us to get up early so we could go walking before it got too hot. We were very pleased with ourselves when we left the camping ground at 7.15am!

Our first walk was to & through Echidna Chasm. It was very narrow and shady and eventually opened out into a cave like area. It had a good echo so Rodger and I tried it out with a couple of songs. (nobody else was about so early).

Most of the rock is conglomerate, made up of many tiny round pebbles all squashed together.

By 9.00am we were on our way to the beginning of our next walk. This was very different and took us right into a valley or pound surrounded by rock formations that were all folded and baggy like elephants. It had lots of palms and eucalypts inside and was a beautiful spot- again we had it to ourselves.

We learnt, from the information boards, that Purnalulu is just a young upstart (360 million) and that the Osmand Ranges nearby are 1.6 billion years old.

By now it was 11.00am and getting hot, so we headed back to the camping ground, but on the way we followed a bush tucker trail and learnt about the local food plants like the black speargrass that has a sweet watery juice (which we tried) and the candelabra wattle used for making spears.

We were tired and hot when we got back and enjoyed the luxury of a glass of cold water with ice blocks from our fridge. As there were no showers or swimming holes to cool down in and nobody was in the camping ground, we stripped off and had fun getting clean and cool by throwing a bucket of water over each other - it felt so good!

We had a lazy afternoon, sitting in the shade and playing harp & guitar until it was time to go to the sunset spot again.  Lovely flowers around us like this one - for you Mum!