Gibb River

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We finally arrived at El Questro. It was a very big resort. Dad and I played a gig so we could camp for free. Ash and I played in the river a lot. We visited a place called Zebedee Springs , which had a lot of little hot springs pools. We walked up El Questro gorge to a swimming hole and I tried to catch bream in my hands. We also went on the Chamberlain Gorge breakfast tour (we had to wake up early as it left at 7am!) where we saw freshwater crocs and met Buddy who had worked on the station most of his life.
After El Questro we made our way to Emma Gorge and walked into the waterfall. We had lunch and swam in the plunge pool. That night we camped at Home Valley station – there was grass to camp on – Yeh!. We drove on again the next day towards Mitchell plateau. We stopped at Drysdale station to drop our camper trailer off so that it didn’t get wrecked from the corrugation’s. We drove into King Edward’s river and set up camp. It was really nice there and dad said there was about $40,000 dollars worth of dunny there. The next day we drove into the start of the Mitchell Fall’s walk. It was three k’s in but it was so flat that it felt like 1, but there was aboriginal art stop’s along the way. We swam above the fall’s and watched all the lucky people who had got helicopter flights as we missed out s they were booked out from big tour groups. But I didn’t really want one because it was $110 for 6 minutes per person. We drove back to the campsite on the worst road ever. The next day we visited the art sites near the camp that had the ‘Bradshaw’ paintings, picked up the trailer and returned to the Gibb river road to camp on the Hann river – no dunny’s here!. It was really grassy and mum, Ash and I walked for ages in the clear, knee deep river and dad picked us up in the car. We drove along and stopped for lunch at Galvin’s gorge. The water was really deep and Ash and I jumped out of a tree into the water. It was really cold. We drove on to Silent Grove and set up camp. AGAIN!!!!.

It wasn’t really silent there, as there were lots of people and we camped in the generator section, but it was cool. And they had flushing dunny’s!
We packed up in the morning and drove out to Bell’s gorge. It was AWESOME.
We jumed off the cliff and into the water. It really hurt sometimes but it was a lot of fun. We drove to Windjana gorge and set up camp. AGAIN!!!!. We met some friends who we know from Beechworth there.We had a look in the gorge and saw freshy’s (that’s Crocs, and not the type you wear on your feet!) everywhere.We stayed two nights so we could watcah the play called ‘Jandamarra’. It was really cool as they had the stage set up with the gorge behind and we were at the place where his story actually happened.. We did a walk into Tunnel cave which is a massive limestone cave that the real Jandamarra hung out in and was eventually shot by a tracker out the front. We got our shoes wet as there were deep, sandy, pools. We packed up camp and drove to Derby where we had pies for lunch and ice creams as we were almost out of all our fresh food.

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Photos

Chamberlain Gorge
Ash got to drive the boat

Bradshaw rock art near King Edward river
The art is also known as Gwion

Comments

[Jarrod Paine]

great blog jaz
Hey team forrer, I am enjoying the travelling stories - especially the toilet commentary and grassy campsite notes. Very jealous of all the swimming you are doing - you could almost swim at Falls Creek today in the rain we had! The snow season is good, and the nordic trails have been awesome. I have taken jemima skiing 5 times now in the "chariot" and she seems to really enjoy it! Daddy daughter day tuesdays are great! hope this finds you all well. cheers JP

[the campbell's]

looks great
We love reading your blog and it looks like a wonderful trip. Happy, Happy, Happy belated birthday to Michelle-I was thinking of you on the 13th lots of love from the Campbells