Day 69 - Mt Hart to Mornington Wilderness Camp

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One of the must-see places on the Gibb River Road is Mornington Wilderness Camp. The camp is run by Australian Wildlife Conservancy, an organisation that was created over 10 years ago and is aimed at reversing the recent trends of mammal extinction through land acquisition and partnership and by land management, particularly through feral animal control and fire management.

Read more at http://www.australianwildlife.org/sanctuaries.aspx

Mornington (the camp) is a tricky place to visit because it has a ninety kilometre driveway and has strict maximums on the number of campers that are allowed. Emails stressed that the best way to avoid disappointment was to get in early. To get in early requires getting to the front gate where you ring the camp reception (or anyone else that answers the two way radio) and confirming the size of your party fits in to the numbers for the day.

We bypassed all of the attractions from Mt Hart to the Mornington front gate to maximise our chances of entry. And we got in. Whoopee!! Now just a 90 kay drive to the camp. Luckily for us the driveway (road) was in excellent condition with very few obstacles to slow us and we took about 90 minutes to reach the camp. The drive in is mostly dry cattle country with the odd creek crossing (most of them dry). We saw a dingo at the creek crossing closer to the camp.

After checking in and finding a camping site we returned to reception to check out the tours that were available in the next few days.

We had dinner at the restaurant. This is a great place to eat (with a set menu each day) and licensed to showcase WA (and other quality Australian) wines. Mornington offers ensuite safari tents at $295 per person (including meals) so they need to provide food of high quality for their visitors. They have chefs that can do this. You don't have to rough it on the Gibb if you have enough money. For us, we could choose when we wanted to eat at the restaurant and when we wanted to eat at "home" - it was a great opportunity to mix and match when it suited us.

After the meal, we joined others to hear of the work that AWC is doing at Mornington and some of their fauna success stories.

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