SATURDAY 14 SEPTEMBER     KINGFISHER CAMP

After a pleasant, leisurely breakfast, I packed some lunch and we drove up to the caretakers’ house. There, we collected a key and mud map from them, and set off to drive to Hedley’s Gorge. This was an area we had not gotten to explore when we were here last year.

The track we took trended roughly north to north west of KFC. It went into increasingly rugged country. We had to use the key to open a gate, at one stage. This prevented unauthorized access by campers, or others.

Had no trouble following the mud map. Parked at the end of the little track to the Gorge, then had to walk into the Gorge, following a dry creek bed. This was really scenic.

The gorge itself featured the vivid red rock walls one expected in this part of the country.

Although the creek itself was not flowing now, there were still a number of deep plunge pools.

The places where there were wet season waterfalls were obvious by the rock discolouration.

We walked and climbed upstream, for quite some distance.

Sat up on a high vantage point overlooking one plunge pool, where there were freshie crocs floating around, and ate our lunch watching their general inactivity.

The Gorge would really be special to view, soon after the Wet, when there was water coming down over the rapids and falls.

We found a Great Bower Bird’s bower. This was a bit different from the usual, because the white decorations he had used were a whole lot of little bones. He’d obviously gotten lucky and found a skeleton of something! We hoped his enterprise had been rewarded.

After several hours exploring the Gorge, we retraced some of the way, then took a track that trended west, towards the NT border, just looking at the country. Decided we were probably getting towards aboriginal lands only, so retraced the way back to camp, turning in the key and map at the caretakers’.

Relaxed at camp for the rest of the afternoon. It had been a great day’s outing.

I think we were both feeling a little trepidation about tomorrow – unknown country, on our own, not sure what we would find at our destination. But excitement too.