And then we followed marked trails down to swim in the water at the bottom. These marked trails were brilliant fun to follow, they took us through water, down rock faces, and ladders, over waterfalls and through streams and pools. We were the only people in the gorges as we are travelling in low season, so it was really exciting and peaceful, but we knew we had to be extra careful as help was so far away. It took 13 hours for the last person to get help!
These are the markers we followed through the gorges...
Climbing through a narrow passage in Weano gorge...
to handrail pool...
Swimming in handrail pool...
Pete swimming back through Hancock gorge. The amphitheatre is in the background, then we climbed through slippery Spider's walk to get to Kermit's pool.
A real adventure for us, we had a great time, then watched a bright red sunset back at the eco retreat and watched lightning flashing all around us.
The final piece of unexpected adventure came at about 9pm when the woman from reception came racing over to our tent to tell us there was an out of control bush fire heading our way. We were told to get in our car and drive to reception immediately to join the convoy of cars to be evacuated. We sat in a line of about a dozen other vehicles waiting for the police. Pete was worried that in our hurry to grab our passports and get in the car, we hadn't picked up the last of our dinner, and he was still hungry! And I was worried that in this convoy of vehicles, we were the only 2 wheel drive, all the others were big 4x4s with bull bars on the front capable of escaping much faster than we were, the nearest town was about 100km away and the first 20km was unsealed which meant we could only travel at about 15 miles an hour without getting a puncture, not much good for escaping raging bush fires! So we were both relieved when they told us the wind had changed direction, we weren't being evacuated after all. In fact the campers from the other campsite were later evacuated onto our campsite and the other campsite got burnt down in the night.
The other gorge we wanted to see remained closed the next day and firefighters from Perth were being flown in to get the blaze under control. We were planning to camp at a layby at the side of the road last night but when we got there, it was deserted, everything was black and then Pete spotted thick smoke nearby, so we drove on! Tonight we are camping behind a petrol station, which sounds dangerous, but there is method in our madness, the Aussies are pretty laid back about the bush fires ("you just gotta let it burn mate") we figure if they are going to protect anything, surely it will be the petrol station. We are heading back towards the coast tomorrow!
Wow, just wow!
ReplyDelete