Purnululu National Park - The Bungle Bungles

The road in

The road in to Purnululu National Park crosses pastoral lease land - the massive Mabel Downs Station. We stopped for the first night at the caravan park just inside the station. We knew that the road in to the park would be slow going so we wanted to head out there in the morning rather than arrive in the dark!

The road in in only accessible to 4WD vehicles. We were allowed to take our camper in as it is an off road, single axled camper. Taking the camper made the journey a little slower. The roads were highly corrugated and very rocky. We also had quite a few creeks to cross, as well as muddy puddles like the one in the picture below. The actual drive took about two hours to cover 50-60km. The roads in the national park itself were pretty good, as money has been provided to maintain them, however the roads through Mabel Downs are very rough as roadwork here is not funded in the same way.

The campsite itself turned out to be perfect. We stayed at the Walardi campground. We don't have a geerator but we stayed on the first generator site (no. 27) so we were between the quiet and the noisy sides. It was actually quiet everywhere as the other sites were a fair distance from us. We were camped beside a dry riverbed. There are many of those to be seen at Purnululu! In fact most of the walking in the park is done following the dry riverbeds.

One of the great things about Purnululu is that the "tourist" sites are relatively close to one another. The famous domes, Cathedral Gorge and the Picaninny Creek walks all start from the same carpark. The afternoon of day one was spent visiting those sites. On day two we travelled a relatively short distance to the other area where you can see Mini Palms Gorge and Echidna Chasm.

The domes (the pictures you will recognise as the Bungle Bungles)

The domes were much larger than I had imagined them from the pictures I had seen. This made them even more impressive.

Cathedral Gorge walk
This walk is spectacular because of the height of the rock walls and the silence of the place. It actually feels like a cathedral at some points as you walk through because it is so calm and still and quiet - until the kids start experimenting with echoes! We actually met up with another family from Canberra while doing this walk and swapped stories of our trips.

Picanninny Creek
By the time we walked to here the kids were pretty tired. These well worn channels were a relief to walk on after walking through pebbles and large smoothed rocks up to this point. There was very little water anywhere, except for a few stagnant pools dotted around. You can do an overnight hike from here (with a permit) if you feel so inclined. We didn't think our kids would go for it!

We continued on to the Picanniny Creek lookout...

The dingoes
This dingo crossed the road in front of us. When we pulled up next to it, it turned around and posed nicely for some photos before heading off into the grass. The next morning we had another dingo walk down the road past our car. The dingoes howling occasionally during the night reminded us of their wildness!

Mini Palms Gorge

This walk was hardgoing in parts due to the long distance thorugh gravel riverbeds in the sun but it was great once we got to the actual gorge. Suddenly there was a change in the scenery. There were palms everywhere but more impressive were the massive conglomerate boulders and walls of this gorge. We had to squeeze between and clamber over many rocks to get to our destination.

The view at the end was of high walls and a serious drop to the ground below from the lookout.

The view back to where we had come from was prettier.

Echidna chasm

Impressive and enormous; narrow too! Scary watching Liam race off in front of me in to the depths. In the third photo you can just see Liam, and Neil (in his blue shirt) disappearing around the corner. This gives you an idea of the height of the walls and how narrow the chasm was in places. You can also see a boulder that has become stuck as it fell into the chasm. At the beginning of the walk there is a warning sign that tells you not to stop under any of these boulders in case they dislodge.

The view up from the bottom, near the end.