Exploring El Questro Wilderness Park

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Day 22 – Saturday 21^st July – El Questro

The grown-ups tried another night under the stars last night under our repaired mosquito net and we woke just after 5am to gentle pre-dawn light and various birds twitchering (is that a word?), tweeting and squawking. We had booked a 3 hour self drive electric boat trip along the Chamberlain River Gorge starting at 7am this morning, so had a quick cup of tea and slice of bread with nutella for breakfast and headed off to the main store to collect the motor, battery, oars and lifejackets for the boat. With all the gear in the car we drove to the boat ramp at the Chamberlain River, reading the safety instructions on the life jackets as we went: Do not enter the water – crocs – absolutely NO swimming, use the oars if necessary and, in the event of an emergency or getting into difficultly, wait for the tour boat and flag it down. We were expecting a nice relaxing slow speed cruise up the gorge, with an opportunity for Luke to have a bit of a fish (the only bait we had was salami so the chances of catching anything were pretty low). As we set off we opened up the awning on the boat to shade us from the early morning sun and a gentle breeze puffed from behind us. The electric motor had 5 speeds, ranging from ultra slow, through properly slow to quite slow, so we pootled off a slow pace, fishing line trailing behind trying to tempt the fish into biting. After a while the gorge got quite rocky and we had to navigate around the obstacles, trying not to trash the propeller. In the meantime, the wind had picked up some more and we found ourselves being blown off course into the side of the gorge. We kept pushing off from the rocks, trying to get ourselves into the deeper water in the middle of the river, before ending up bashing into the rocks again. The electric motor didn’t have anywhere near enough power to give us momentum to get moving towards the deeper water. There was only one thing for it – Mark took off his shorts, took his life into his hands and hopped out of the boat onto the rocky shore, planning to push us away from the rocks and get back in. We repeated this action at least 10 times with not a crocodile in sight, thankfully. But still we were stuck, unable to get going in either direction, wind keeping us stuck to the rocks. At least the hull of the boat was tough aluminium and there was no danger of us sinking, but how could we get out of the gorge? We didn’t know what time the tour boat would come along so we had to try again and free ourselves. Much too late it dawned on us that the boat awning was acting as a sail and was catching the wind, making it impossible for the electric motor to get us out of the rocky area. Once we put the awning down we had a much better chance of rescuing ourselves. Mark hopped back in to give us a push, Luke and I rowed like mad with the oars and Anna pointed out the best route through the rocks. Hooray – we were finally boating along in the deep water, back towards the boat ramp, feeling very relieved. As we gently cruised downstream we saw the Wandjina tour boat depart from the jetty and gave it a breezy wave, as though we’d had not drama at all on our little boat trip.

Safely back at the township we cooked ourselves a slap up breakfast – bacon, fried egg and baked bean wrap – to give us energy for the next adventure of the day, a hike in Emma Gorge. Emma Gorge is in a resort about 30kms East of El Questro but is part of the El Questro Wilderness Park. The 2km hike into the gorge involved water crossings and lots of climbing over boulders, standard terrain for the area and lots of fun. At the Gorge there was a light sprinkling of water coming over the cliffs at the top and into the pool. The water was clear and quite cold but on the edge of the pool we were surprised by a stream of thermal spring water coming down the cliff creating a little spa area in the wall of the cliffs. Once you had climbed up there you could stay there for ages, taking in the beauty of the spot and enjoying the beautiful warm thermal spring water spraying on our backs. As we were getting changed for our walk back we spotted a water monitor hiding in the shadows of the gorge. Back at the Resort car park we refilled our water bottles from a tap coming out of the trunk of a boab tree – very cool!

We still had time to do some 4WDing back in the main part of El Questro and decided to head out to Explosion Gorge. Explosion Gorge is another gorge on the Chamberlain River. The road out there was quite rough, starting with a very long stony river crossing. Not surprisingly Explosion Gorge is very spectacular and dramatic. On the way back we drove up to Branco’s lookout for more spectacular views of the wilderness park.

Saturday night is barbecue and live music night at El Questro so after a proper hot shower (I hope no one is making notes of the number and infrequency of the mention of showers in this blog…) and doing a load of washing to try to get rid of a layer of red dirt on our clothes, we treated ourselves to the buffet BBQ dinner (steak, satay chicken and delicious barramundi with lots of great salads) and enjoyed the live music standing around the large campfire for a good old outback experience. So we went to bed very full and tired after a long and eventful day. Tonight it was girls’ night out for Anna and Hazel, whose turn it was to sleep under the stars in the mossie net.

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Photos

Leisurely cruise along the Chamberlain River
Before it got hairy and scary!