Thurs 12th Sept – Manning Gorge Walk and cliff scramble

We decided to get up early and do the walk to Manning Gorge before it got hot. The walk begins by crossing the river in a little boat that you work with a pulley. After that it was exactly an hour to the gorge with, as usual, a fair amount of rock hopping. 

We were a bit disappointed when we got there, as the pictures in the book look much better, the waterfall wasn't running and the water didn't look very inviting, it was greenish and still. Rodger did some extensive rock climbing to see if there was a pool above the falls and there was, but it was only small. We decided we would wait for our swim until we got back to the river.

After the swim we packed up, had lunch and set off to Galvin's Gorge, only 14 Kms up the road. Here we met Greg and Di who had just been there. It was only 1 km away, so we walked there, had a swim and walked back in an hour. 

We had still not really decided where to go next, but this was decided for us as ,when we got to the Charnley River Station turn off, there was a big sign saying " Closed".

Only 4kms further was the turn off to Mornington Wildlife Sanctuary, so we visited here a couple of days earlier than we planned. It's 100kms off the road, but it was a great drive. The scenery was stunning, as we drove towards the King Leopald Ranges and the road condition was amazing, far better than the Gibb.

When we arrived, we discovered it's quite different to the Dept of the Environment and Conservation camping grounds. Mornington doesn’t allow camp fires, so they provide gas BBQs and, bliss of bliss hot showers! They have plentiful drinking water too because they have 2 or 3 springs on the property.

Of course, being a wildlife sanctuary, Rodger wasn't able to fish (although the Sanctuary is on the site of a previous fishing camp.  We were wondering if we were out of line lighting our mozzie coil!

We enjoyed our showers so much after 6 days without any, and changed our clothes in honour of the occasion.

Rodger cooked us a delicious BBQ, using some steaks we'd had no way of cooking on the camp fires, while I washed our clothes and then, because we were very tired after 2 gorge walks and a long drive, we feel asleep about 9.00pm.