TUESDAY 24 JULY     MANNING GORGE CAMPGROUND

This morning M and John went off, in the Troopy, to drive and then walk to, the Barnett River Gorge. They had to drive the 7kms back to the Gibb, then east for 29kms, then 5kms on a rather rough track to the bush camping and parking area.

The walk to the Gorge was only a km or so. Last trip, we camped in the bush there and did the walk, up over the sandstone ridge and down to the gorge. It was well worth doing. It was not as popular or frequented as some of the other good places along the Gibb, possibly because it was so close to Manning Gorge.

I opted to stay at camp. My heel and ankle were both sore, and it was a walk I had done before. I made a damper and cooked it in the camp oven – the first time we had used it on this trip. The damper turned out ok, although I did have the oven a bit too hot.

I enjoyed pottering about camp. The always present crows provided constant entertainment.

M and John really enjoyed their walk to the Gorge. They enjoyed the damper, too!

In the early evening, drove up to the Roadhouse and phoned son. I had originally suggested that he try to manage meeting up with us in the northern Kimberley, at Honeymoon Bay. Being a keen fishing person, we thought he’d enjoy going fishing up there. However, he could only manage to get a week of leave, so that would limit how far into the Kimberley he could get. We decided that he would meet us on August 11 at Home Valley Station.

So that would set a time limit on how long we could spend in the section north of the Gibb – about two and a half weeks. That was alright – we had been there before, and it was enough time for M to gain a fair experience of that area.

It would be good to see the offspring again and be able to really assess how he was managing.