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Published: August 8th 2007
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Barnett Gorge
The gorge was nice, but not worth the walk in. From Drysdale we went to Barnett Gorge, just 30kms short of Barnett Roadhouse. Described to us in Ron Moon’s Kimberley Bible as a nice gorge and great swimming only 300m from the car park. Well, it was the worlds longest 300m; after what felt to be about 600m we came to the top of the gorge and then had another 1km to go before we could safely make our way into the gorge and go for a swim. Swim was good, but not really worth the walk, considering a nest of green ants that fell on Bruce and started stinging him, added to his later covering of small leech like creatures when he sat in one of the small water falls. After being a bit disappointed/seriously pissed off, we set up camp in the bush camping with no facilities, but just 10m from a running stream. Decided to have beer in the cool 400mm deep stream, much nicer than the gorge walk. In the later afternoon sun, it was a spectacular spot to stop and we watched a large spider web his dinner plater for the evening. This area can be found in the second part of the camping area (cross
Beer Anyone
This was much nicer than the Gorge walk and only 10m from our camp. the very rocky and rough dry river bed), about 1.5kms short of the Gorge parking.
From Barnett Gorge we drove the huge 30km to Mt Barnett Station as it is the entrance to Manning Gorge, which is a further 7km, from the Road House on a private road. Arrive on Sunday morning, so did not yet have the footy scores up for the Sunday afternoon game (guess specifically which team), so had to wait a few more days for that one. The Saturday scores were up on the board though, so, unwittingly, gave us good information to hassle various people later in the evening on how their team had played.
Found a great spot at the camp ground, close to both the river and facilities. There are good amenities, with plenty of water, but only cold showers because of a faulty generator/pump that is required to pump the water to the solar hot water storage heaters. Some ‘Winner’ plugged a welder into a power point in the loos and blew up the generator, so they were waiting on parts. Here is another rule of life; Nothing up here arrives quickly. The river is a great place to swim
Cockatoo Anyone
In the Manning Gorge campsite there were birds everyone, the top types were the Cockatoos and the Crows. with only a couple of small fresh water crocs rumoured to be in residence, we never saw them. There is a huge flat rock in the middle with a 3m hole on the other side, which was used by Bruce and the other campers in ‘cannon-ball’ bombings to see who could make the biggest splash.
The Gorge itself is a 2.5km one way walk with 2 ways you can start the walk; One is to wade through knee deep water around the main water hole, this is the longer of the trips by 20 minutes with the other is to swim across the water hole with your belongings in a foam broccoli box. Amanda chose the wade as it was 8:30am, and a bit to early for a swim. We should have swam, it was a hard rocky walk, and we got very wet anyway. By the time we got to the waterfall it was raining quite hard and solidly, then by the time we got back there was no need to change into our bathers for the swim across the water hole, as we were soaked through, but we did. Luckily for the camera and clothes, the swim
Akubra wearing Crocodile
The Manning Gorge swimming hole, just 100m from our camp site. This is the water hole you swam across to start the Gorge walk. But watch out for Akubra wearing crocodiles. was uneventful although Bruce had to go get some boxes from the other side for the group that walked back.
The Gorge and Waterfalls were very good, if not as majestic as the Mitchell Falls. There was a fair bit of water and you can rock hop all the way up to the top of the falls or if you were looking for a swim, you could swim in settled pools near the track or up into the water hole where the main water falls into. If it had been a little warmer and much drier, we would have rocked hopped and swam, but it was a little cold and wet, with the rocks being a bit slippery - so we took the scenic viewpoint from a way back. This is where we meet with our future adoptive parents (long story); John, Jenny, Caroline and Vin and we all walked back to the camp.
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