After a late departure from Gayndah we stopped in at the RM Williams Bush Learning Centre at Eidsvold. RM was a real bushman – a horseman, drover, cameleer and grazier. In those early days he saw a need for ‘bushwear’ and started crafting boots and other essentials. After striking gold on a small claim he was able to move to an enormous mansion in Adelaide where he was introduced into ‘Society’ and met his first wife Thelma. He injected capital into his boot and clothing business which expanded into it’s own niche and still is synonymous with quality and workmanship.. He was never comfortable with the high life and after leaving his wife and 6 children, he returned to the land purchasing and running a property called Rockbar near Eidsvold Queensland and having another 4 children with his second wife. Certainly a busy and interesting life.
We experienced a couple of very dubious free camps over the next two nights, one at the back of the Duaringa Hotel -$10 and the other behind a BP station at Dingo. Councils in this regional area have spent money on decorating water towers and silos, as well as erecting very interesting metal panels welcoming you to the town. Here’s a couple of photos which impressed us.
Just out of Dingo we left the caravan in a parking area and headed into the Blackdown National Park where we trekked in to see Rainbow Falls and have a picnic sitting high above the river. The park also has a 4WD loop (about 20kms long) so we had a bit of fun negotiating some of the tracks and got the truck covered in red dust.
The next town of note was Emerald, which in a typically ironic Aussie way, is where they mine sapphires. We were able to stock up here and carried on to spend a night on our own at our favourite bush camp so far on the road to Carnarvon Gorge.
Most people spend a minimum of 3 days visiting the gorge, which itself is 30 km long and was created by water erosion. Because of the number of travelers this year we were only able to get one night at Sandstone Park caravan park which is just a huge area on top of a plateau just outside the park with no facilities. There was no free camping within about 20 km so we took the one night and were then lucky enough to be offered another due to a cancellation.
The main track follows the gorge with many river crossings and side tracks to other points of interest. We walked the main track (22km – 7 hours) which took us to some well preserved Aboriginal cave paintings and to a point where the gorge had previously carved through the sandstone leaving a gap just big enough to squeeze through. Along the way and on other side tracks where the amphitheater, moss garden, art gallery (more well preserved wall paintings) and another canyon.
Our camping spot was very windblown and each site was about a 1/4 acre – we could have fitted 2 or 3 vans on our space. We built a nice fire which we cooked over that night. Our neighbour came over to say the person previously on our site had spotted mice coming out of a hole – right under where we had parked. John got busy and filled the hole completely with rocks and dirt – take that you pesky creatures!
