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Day 22 El Questro - Manning Gorge
Sunday night at Manning Gorge campsite and there seems to be a competition between the people playing Acker Bilk and the people playing Spanish guitar music on the other side of us! I'm not sure why, but it seems like this camp site is full of groups - often with tents all huddled round a generator - and getting very social. Not quite our cup of tea, we are independent types who go to bed when it gets dark and get up when it gets light and are on our way not too long after. We also seem to travel longer distances each day as well, 'cos everyone goes ooohhh when they hear where we've come from that day.
It's not like we really go that far either - only about 350 k today with the first 50 being a backtrack to Emma Gorge. There was 2 hour walk there, various stops for photo's, drinks and lunch, a swim here after we put the tent up and then dinner and it is still only just about 7. In fact, today was longer travelling than usual because some parts of the road were a bit rough so we took it easy. We saw one car with broken tracking rod, a trailer with what seemed to be a broken half axle and while we were having lunch some people came in and changed a tyre on their 'cruiser - Gibb River Road 3 - tourists nil.
So today we started with a photo shoot of me talking to a Boab tree. These are really quite interesting and look just as though they should have big wide staring eyes and a mouth saying Ooohh. So we think that's what we'll do on the photo. Then we backtracked a bit as I mentioned earlier and went to Emma Gorge. This has some really nice tent/cabin type things which look like a really good idea (so we photographed them and took notes for future reference) and would be quite nice to stay in. The walk up the gorge was nothing compared to last night's climb, but we weren't complaining and the pool at the top was lovely - no two ways about it. Wimped out of a swim mind you, 'cos we had done that last night and there were a few people there already. Took us a good couple of hours though all up.
Then we were off driving again, but carefully as we had come across a Landrover Discovery on the way out from El Questro (he was on his way in and had been since last night!) with a broken tracking rod. Poor souls had stuffed it last night and waited till midnight before camping for the night and at 7.30 this morning were still waiting for the tow truck! I'd have offered to tow them myself, but with a broken tracking rod they need a proper tow truck to lift the front wheels up. The road conditions varied quite a bit actually, sometimes really good gravel you could motor along on (but the road was a bit twisty so we couldn't go too fast) and in other places really rocky with corrugations and sharp gravel that made me wince a bit.
We stopped at a little place to buy a cold drink and then when we on the road again we saw a couple of cars stopped and a a group of people so we slowed down and found that someone's trailer had broken an axle. Now it says almost everywhere that towing is not recommended on these roads so it was hard to have too much sympathy with these people, but I guess if you are travelling with a family then you need the space inside for people. I have to say though that some of these people travel with a lot of really weird stuff. Petrol generators seem to be interspersed with solar panels, everyone has at least one boat and three fishing rods, great big cooking stoves (and then they collect mountains of wood to light bonfires every night) and really big looking tents. I mean, in this weather all you want the tent for is to keep the bugs out! We just throw ours up and don't even bother with the fly-sheet 'cos it isn't going to rain here for another 6 months! Anyway, the only thing the people with the broken trailer needed was a U-bolt (which we didn't have) and they seemed to be getting on fine so we carried on and stopped for lunch in a shady spot we reckon is Melon Springs. Our 4WD book reckons it is Campbell creek, but we think they have got it wrong 'cos on our map Campbell creek is about 30 k further back. Anyway, while we were having our bite a couple of 'cruisers turned up and one of them got its wheel changed. It looked like the start of some kind of tour as the man in the first 'cruiser (with the boat on the roof) came over and had a chat with us saying that every time he brought a group along here one of them ad a flat 'cos the gravel was really sharp. I thought that maybe they could pack a bit less or drive a bit slower, but I didn't say anything 'cos he looked like he thought he knew what he was doing and probably didn't take kindly to criticism.
After that it was more of the same with good then bad gravel until we got to Mount Barker roadhouse. We filled up with diesel and went inside to pay and to get a camp site permit (as this is an aboriginal area) and got into a chat with the lady running the place. Turns out the managers she had in there had left just before the tourist season so she was pretty short-handed and was having to do lots herself. We got the impression that she was running the whole station on behalf of the aboriginal community pretty much on her own so we didn't ask about Russel's friend (maybe he was the manager that left just recently). It seems like it is very easy to get work up here, but nobody stays, Paul Mock yesterday and now the lady here both complained about getting people to put in the effort and to stay and make a go of things. I guess it is a hard life, but if you are going to do something you should at least make an effort to do it well. But after that, the camp site here is really nice and there is a nice lake that we swam in after putting the tent up. This is the Lower Manning Gorge and tomorrow morning we are going to walk to the Upper Manning Gorge where there is supposed to be a really nice view - even if the water fall isn't running at the moment (like everything here it only runs in the wet). When we got in we stopped at one site and a lady came over and asked did we mind her generator and then told us her life story (well, perhaps not all of it, just most). I think when people see me they just know they can come up and talk 'cos we get everyone coming over for a chat whenever we pull up anywhere. Those overgrown shopping trolleys don't get that kind of attention I'm sure. So, it's bed time now 'cos we want to get an early start for this walk and then get off down towards Windjana Gorge and Tunnel Creek. I think we may be a bit ambitious in our plans for tomorrow, but then again nothing is fixed and it it takes longer than we thought then we'll just camp and carry on the day after. We're pretty flexible really, even though so far we have travelled exactly as we planned it before we started, that just goes to show how good Hild's plans were! Talk to you soon Lionel |
