Porcupine Gorge
After a quick overnight we travelled from Hughenden via Porcupine Gorge NP and Ravenshoe, to the town of Atherton.
By chance we were in the Information Centre at Hughenden when we over-heard the staff telling another person about how wonderful the gorge was. We were able to book a couple of nights in the Procupine Gorge National Park (no facilities) which was on our way north and another of those rare finds
The gorge is on Porcupine Creek and is called Australia’s mini Grand Canyon with beautiful coloured sedimentary basalt and stand stone cliffs built up over hundreds of millions of years. The walking track climbs down 2.2 km so we made sure to do this early in the morning and took a picnic lunch to have on the banks of Porcupine creek. Over time the swirling action of the water has formed wonderful swimming holes where we were able to cool off in the shadow of the dominant feature – Pyramid Rock. The river banks are beautiful white sandstone which is quite smooth underfoot and we were able to walk upstream for a couple of kilometres until the sun made us beat a hasty retreat back to the gorge and a lovely cool off in the swimming holes. Quite surprisingly the water temperature was about 24 degrees so very pleasant – and no need to dry off before heading back for the climb to our camping spot in the plateau in the midday sun.
After 2 nights we were off again. This choice of route meant we had 110 kms of dirt road but shortened the overall distance (rather than driving on the tar-sealed road via Charters Towers) by more than 200 kms. The dirt road was generally very smooth with only a few rough patches but was a good test for us – to see what broke! Before setting out we strung a stone catching net between the bumper of the car and the front of the caravan – this prevents stones flicking up from the tyres, ricocheting off the caravan and breaking the back window of the truck which anecdotally seems to happen fairly often. It certainly worked a treat catching quite a few large rocks. One thing we did learn on this section was that PVC fittings are no match for these roads.
Even though we have a high clearance van we still had damage. Luckily all the work we did at Gayndah covering the plumbing saved any damage to these but we did manage to have the plastic drain fittings on one water tank break off resulting in the loss of all our water (both tanks drain to the same outlet). We were staying at the Millstream Golf Course at Ravenshoe which had plenty of potable water so this wasn’t the disaster it would have been when we get to more remote dry places. John was able to plug the outlet permanently using fencing wire and silicone ensuring this doesn’t happen again. While inspecting the tanks he also found one of the wires for our caravan’s electric brakes wires had come off – now that was a good find as it could have been serious!
Before leaving Millstream the following day we had a quick 9 holes of golf. I don’t think filling divots is a high priority because the sand bucket filling troughs were growing a wonderful array of weeds. On speaking to the caretaker of the course she was saying how the influx of travelers paying to park overnight (or longer) had been a financial savior and essential in keeping clubs like this above water through these difficult times. Onward to Atherton …