We left Fitzroy Crossing in light rain and it rained on and off all the way to the Bungles. Stopped in Halls Creek to do a little shopping and to refuel and it was freezing cold and damp. Made good time to the turnoff to the Bungles and at least the rain settled the dust on the road. The road into the national park is 52kms of quite rough dirt, a few creek crossings and corrugations. Took about an hour and a half and after checking out the two campgrounds, decided to stay at the southern one as it was smaller and very few people there. Because of the road conditions, there were only camper trailers and tents there. The rain stopped as we arrived so we set up quite comfortably and put up our ensuite so we could have a shower - no showers here, just toilets. The next morning the sun was shining and the sky cloudless and we committed to stay for 4 nights. It was quite warm so we decided we would do a walk in the morning, come home for lunch and spend the afternoons reading. The scenery is stunning. The Park was world heritage listed in 2003 due to its natural beauty and unusual geology. The landscape is covered with domes that are striped in orange and grey with a pattern that looks like roof shingles. In between the domes there are stunning gorges carved through the rock. We did all the walks - Cathedral Gorge, Mini Palm Gorge, Echidna Chasm where the sun shines to the floor of the chasm at midday (see the photo) and Piccaninny Creek. It was quite festive at Echidna Chasm as there were about 30 people standing just waiting for the moment when the sun was overhead and in the right spot for photos. Some of the walks were challenging with boulders to scramble over and rocks to squeeze between, but in the tricky bits they have put in ladders to make things easy. We have had lots of exercise which must be doing us some good - even had to put another hole in Jim's belt so his pants wouldn't fall off!! We headed back to Halls Creek after an early start but this time had to contend with the dust on the road - no rain this time. We had planned to stay at Halls Creek on Monday night and then head down the Tanami Track on Tuesday morning but we ran into a couple from Victoria who we had met up with a couple of times along the way - they were two cars behind us in the queue for diesel - they were also going down the Tanami so we decided we would go together. The plan was to get to Wolfe Creek for the night which was about 170kms so off we went.
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