Nele & Andrew Around Oz: Big Bend Campsite, Carnarvon Gorge National Park, QLD

Day 251 – 25^th October 2011

Big Bend Campsite, Carnarvon Gorge National Park, QLD

This morning we set off on another overnight hike within Carnarvon Gorge. The main track leads to the Big Bend Campsite where we camped the night (9.6km), with 22 creek crossings and many detours on the various sidetracks along the way. First up was the track to Boolimba Bluff with magnificent views of the gorge (6.2km return – 1hr 30min). Next we visited beautiful Moss Gardens (1.2km return - 30mins), the amazing Amphitheatre (1.3km return – 30mins), Wards Canyon (540m return – 20mins), the Art Gallery (780m return – 40mins) and Cathedral Cave (along the main track). Each time we left our backpacks at the main track and upon our return from Moss Gardens we noticed someone had opened the top and side pockets of Nele’s backpack – leaving all our toiletries on the ground. Not long after we saw the guilty one… a crow – they are clever birds those crows! When we arrived at the campsite, we set up the tent before backtracking 420m to Boowinda Gorge. We walked quite a way through the gorge to the point where you can climb up to Battleship Spur Lookout. We started the climb but at the first plateau we had to decide to turn back as we didn’t really know how much further it was and we were running our of time (4km return – 2h). Back at the camp we cooked tea and hopped into bed just as it got dark. Overall for the day we walked 24.5km. Later in the evening we heard a thunderstorm in the distance and saw lots of lightening. Nele has never been very keen on thunderstorms so she was a bit scared but Andrew was a good support. Luckily we only received a few small showers and the storm passed us.