Kennedy’s weird rocks

The day dawned damp and dreary, giving just the kind of incentive you need to stay in bed. We’ve done pretty well, having got to the end of our second month without a day of rain, but today was it. Apparently we had 1mm overnight, and a couple more during the day, but never heavy enough to stop us from doing anything, just damp all day.

There are several walks in the area around the campsite, and we chose a couple to tackle in the morning. The first, Draper’s Gorge, is a scramble up a gorge to a dry plunge pool. It gave us our first real introduction to the strange rocks of the area. Apparently generally sandstone, there are some weird inclusions which seem more volcanic in origin, perhaps a little like thunder eggs but without the crystals inside. The camp hosts suggest they may be stromatolites, but that is just what they have heard. A lot of iron in the sandstone, so we are back in red sand country, but at least the rain keeps the dust down.

The second destination was up a gorge onto the top of the escarpment. We did this one second in the hope the rain would clear, but if anything it was a little wetter by the time we tackled it. Still had a fine view over the campground, with the suggestion too of water in some of the claypans, so the rain was apparently heavier elsewhere.

At lunch we had a little interlude of helping a grey nomad load his dead trailer onto a flatbed trailer. Apparently he had arrived yesterday before us, just in time to have a wheel fall off. The bearing had seized and had just about all departed, but it had done the very kind thing of hanging on all the way to the campground. The driver was completely oblivious to it until it was pointed out, at which point the wheel fell off.

In the damp afternoon we drove to nearby honeycomb gorge, which provides the famous photographs in the area, before coming back and using the excuse of a damp afternoon to cook ourselves a fine pudding for dinner.

 

 

It is a real pleasure to be able to spend the evening with like-minded travellers around a campfire. A much better class of people for chatting than you get in the busier places. Hence the blog is a little short tonight.

 

 

p.s. Hello 1S