With Fitzroy Crossing covered we continued eastward toward Halls Creek and beyond to the Bungle Bungles or Purnululu National Park, as it is now known. We knew of a few free camp spots along the way and we found a very pleasant stop at Mary’s Pools, the best free camp we’ve come across yet. Located on a small river with big established trees to find shade under and really clean, we picked a nice patch to spend the night. The kids got busy with some work and it wasn’t long till they met two young girls from the Central Coast, also traveling around Oz with their parents.
Through to Hall’s Creek in the morning and a stern talk to Oscar about his out of control behaviour was entered into - we’ve lost count how many of these we’ve had!
We had a couple of choices for stays outside the Bungles, a couple of free camps just off the main highway, or a caravan park inside the cattle station just to the west of the national park. Given we had heard and read about some bad experiences with theft at the free camps, we elected to go for the caravan park. We elected to take an unpowered site and once we were shown to the area where we could choose our spot we busied ourselves with collection firewood from the surrounding bush to have a fire. After dinner the kids roasted some marshmallows on the fire and Trace and I cracked a bottle of Muscat we’d been nursing since Margaret River which with some dark chocolate was sipped down slowly with dark chocolate by the warm glow of the fire and under an outback sky blanketed by stars. We sent the kids to bed early to enjoy a little quiet time by ourselves only it didn’t really work out that way - it never really seems to.
After an early breakkie and with high expectations we started the windy and dusty road to the Bungles. We wanted to get in early in order to do a few of the walks, one in the southern region of the park and a couple in the north. As it turns out the road was very corrugated early on, very up and down and fairly windy, so much so that both Jem and Oscar became car sick necessitating plastic bags to be deployed (thankfully no vomiting), Jem shifting to the front middle seat and several stops along the way for fresh air (note our lack of rear number plate).
It was well worth it however, with a beautifully scenic drive and some equally beautiful walks through the beehive-like structures and deeply cut gorges created by landscape erosion over millions of years. Heaps of photo opportunities...here are a few samples.
It was a full day of driving and walking and after the trip back which was made more difficult by the setting sun and the lingering dust from vehicle hovering above the difficult road, we were all glad to get back to the caravan and put our feet up. No fancy meals tonight, just 2-minute noodles and whatever else could be scraped together. Once again, our fire was the perfect place to rest our weary bones after the day’s walking and our bone jarring road trip.
Driving back onto bitumen was a welcome relief the following day as we headed north-east toward Kununurra, in the east Kimberley.
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