Sunday 22nd July 2012 Warnum – exploring Bungle Bungles

Trip Meter Reading Start –  8080
Trip Meter Reading Finish –  8382
Total Km Travelled – 302 km

Look at these little beauties!!!

Filled up at Warnum unleaded $1.77.9/Ltr  37.10L $66

Comments -  Luke Baker

Today we took the falcon 4wding covering about 200km of dirt road where we crossed 10 wet and 57 dry creek beds; some where very deep and rocky.  We did variarse walks through out the Bungle Bungles, my favourite one was the Echidna chasm where you had to walk through a very narrow gap through the mountains.  I felt like IndiAnna Jones.

Comments – Mum and Dad

Well, seriously we had no idea what we were really in for (road conditions that is) as not many people drive into the Bungle Bungles in a Ford AWD, however after being convinced by Bill and Rodney (the two WA locals we met at Kununurra), we were going to shit it in, we drove, fingers crossed from camp at 7am this morning.

Entrance to Echidna Chasm

Turkey Creek to the entrance into the Bungles off the Northern Highway was 52 kms of smoothe sailing (took 30 minutes); once we turned off the next 53 kms (took 1.5 hours) was corrugated dusty unsealed road with 10 very wet creek crossings (the deepest came up to the bottom of the doors.  The falcon (Ford Territory Ghia) did not let us down; we were invincible and thought we were pretty good seeing our ‘ford’ could keep up with all the other $50 k plus tosser cars.....then we saw a Nissan X’Trail (god luv them, they had made it too)  All we could think about was that had we had to go on a tour it would have cost the 5 of us $1200 and the Ford saved it for us...woo hoo. So to all you families, if you have an AWD and the road conditions are favourable and you are a competent driver, HAVE A GO...if it looks iffy, turn around and go back or watch another car go through to guage how deep.  The lucky thing was that there were no deep holes and  being mid July, it hadn’t rained for some time.

Walking toward Picaninniy Lookout along stone eroded river beds

Luke shows erosion at its best at Purnulul Nat Park

Anyway, enough about the Ford...as we only had the day, we drove the extra 26 kms to Cathedral Gorge within the Purnululu national park before  exploring Echidna Chasm which was 19km in the other direction....the pictures don’t do this place justice, and a flight wouldn’t either as you have to walk through the place to get a real sense of how big the domes are.....don’t miss this if you are up this way; save for a tour if you have to.

Cathedral Gorge, Purnululu National Park WA (Mark, Luke, Bruce, Betty)