Canarvon Gorge National Park

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The final field our group did in Australia was to Canarvon Gorge National Park on the edge of the outback. The 12 hour bus ride was not a pleasant one; however I was one of the lucky few to get my own seat. We left at 7am and didn’t pull into the park until 6:30pm. It was an extremely long day. During the trip we were camping. Our site had 20 two person tents all over the camp grounds. I was a little worried how this week would go since camping is not really my thing as I prefer to sleep in a bed but it was actually quite nice. The bathrooms were extremely nice public bathrooms and we had a cook that made all of our food and it was delicious, definitely the best camping food I have ever eaten. I slept outside every night of the trip. We had cots that we were able to sleep on making it a little more comfortable; however my back was quite sore by the end of the week. It was amazing waking up at 1 in the morning to see some of the brightest stars in the world shining down on you. It got pretty cold at night though. I would go to bed with three layers on. Thank god I had a warm sleeping bag or it would have been awful.



During the day we would go on various hikes. The first morning we climbed up the gorge the, a very steep path, at 5:00 in the morning to reach a beautiful view of the gorge. This hike was definitely challenging because I had a cold and could barely breathe let alone climb to the top of a gorge. The view was impeccable though and definitely worth the intense climb. Later that day we went down to the water hole and went swimming to cool down in the hot 90 degree day.



The next day we went on a hike through the bottom of the gorge. It was extremely hot and the hike lasted the entire day. While on the hike we saw a lot of amazing sites. The first one was the amphitheatre it was this massive rock formation that was like a cave with the top cut off. It is not even possible to describe this structure in words. It was nice in cool inside though and was a great break from the hot winds. Next we saw some aboriginal artwork and then ate lunch by the Canarvon creek. We then went into a small canyon filled with prehistoric fern tree and you felt like you had just walked into a rainforest right on the edge of a canyon and finally that day we walked through the moss gardens which was another place that seemed like we had left the outback and entered the rainforest. The next day we went on another hike where we were actually able to walk inside a gorge. As we walk in it you had to climb up and down rocks and logs to get through and avoid stepping in the water. It was amazing.



On the way home we had an unfortunate event occur with the bus breaking down. We were stuck in the town called Toolundra in the middle of nowhere for two hours as the bus driver MG (the most great bus driver) was sweating over the engine trying to fix it and eventually just calling another bus to take us the rest of the way back to Brisbane. The funny part was that he did manage to fix the bus and after we all piled in the bus, that couldn’t even fit everyone in our group, we looked out the window before driving away only to see our other bus pass us and beat us home to Brisbane.

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