We stayed at Takaraka, which is pretty much the only place you can stay in a van where you can get showers and power, and some wifi. No phone reception so we were pretty much off grid - the wifi was ok for emails, but not for loading photos or doing blogs. It was such a lovely place, like staying in a National Park but with great facilities. Carnarvon creek runs along one side and there are platypus to be spotted early in the morning or in the evening. Happy hour every night and roast dinners three nights per week.
Of course, the nearby national park is the main attraction, and it is wonderful. There are a number of shorter easier walks, and we did these first to get our hiking legs ready. Mickey's Creek gorge was spectacular, and we enjoyed the short walk to the aboriginal art at Baloon cave.
We did a super-fantastic night walk with a guide and saw 3 types of glider - yellow bellied, which are like flying teatowels with tails; greater gliders, of which you could really only see their red eyes; and a very active squirrel glider scurrying about like a little white mouse at the top of a tree. We also had excellent views of several platypus at the main creek crossing. The special night spotting torches the guide used were excellent for letting us see the animals without disturbing them too much. Needless to say, I didn't get photos :-).
The visitor info centre was excellent, and there were always kangaroos and whip tailed wallabies around there.
The main walks are up the gorge, and are best tackled as one long walk of 14km. There are many creek crossings, with a big one right at the beginning.
There are longer versions, but 14km was long enough for us. You head out to the furthest point you intend to visit and then zigzag back going up the various side canyons. Our walk included the Art Gallery, Ward's canyon, the Ampitheatre, and the Moss Garden. It started raining while we were in the Moss Garden, so our last 3km were a bit soggy, but we were pretty hot by then so we didn't mind much.
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| The Art Gallery |
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| King ferns in Ward's canyon |
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| Entrance to Ampitheatre |
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| Leaving Ampitheatre |
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| Pool at Moss Garden |
We considered the Boolimba bluff walk, but decided against it, given its numerous stairs and ladders. But we drove out to Sandstone, the new 'bush' camp spot to get the panoramic views. Spectacular!
A wonderful, peaceful place to visit.
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