Day 82 Purnululu - The Bungle Bungles Northern Part

Next two days it is Purnululu National Park, better known as the Bungle Bungles. From Halls Creek it is at first an easy drive on the highway til the turn-off to the national park. The about 53km to the national park are a rough, not well-maintained gravel road with lots of bumps, stones and to our surprise creek/water crossings. The night before there was unexpected rainfall, so many creeks had water, sometimes half a meter. So Stuart was very relieved when we reached the Purnululu National Park with all tyres and the engine still working...

After a short stop at the visitor information centre for the overnight permission and a map, we decided to explore the northern part of the national park before heading to the accommodation in the more southern part of the park. First stop was the Kungkalanayi Lookout, which gave us already a good impression on how the Bungle Bungles will be like: black and red stones, sometimes domes, sometimes other stone formations.

On route to the northern walks is the Stonehenge lookout. Not too much to see on this short walk, but some information about plants in the area.

The Osmand Lookout was next and the favourite one of Stuart, offering a 360 degree lookout with views on different stone formations, making it with the palm trees a pretty photogenic stop indeed - so it is definitely worth to do the little detour from the Echidna Chasm walk up the hill.

Echidna Chasm walk leads you into a chasm in the shade, so nice cool temperatures and impressive views. At the moment you cannot walk to the end of the chasm due some rocks have been falling down and blocking the way. At about midday the chasm is supposed to glow in a red light, and with the information from the visitor centre this was supposed to happen around 12am. Given the sunlight at 11:30am this information was probably wrong, so we were to late to see any glow that day.

 

Next short stop was for the Bloodwood Lookout for some nice views on the Bungle Bungles.

The last and most challenging walk for the day was the Mini Palms Trail. At first the walk is easy giving you spectacular views on the stone formations. Then the way is a scramble over rocks, always searching where to go, through/over/under which stones you have to walk on until you reach the palm gorge, where the walk to the end of the gorge is a bit easier again. Stuart remained in the car and was very happy about it, as it was were all the food was - not a nice surprise at the end of a walk to be hungry and not being able to eat the food extra bought for the walking trip.

Luckily the car did make it to the Bungle Bungle Wilderness lodge, where we stayed in the "Mini Palms" named safari tent including a three-course dinner. We were the only independent travelers that evening, but the two tour groups were fascinated by Stuart and cheered a lot. Stuart enjoyed the attention very much!