Carnarvon Gorge

After a week of work Jim offered for us to stay on and pick the glory run of his murcotts, i.e. picking only the largest and leaving the smaller fruit on the trees. We really liked Jim and I think the feeling was mutual. Jim still had mandarin tests to do and this wasn’t going to happen for a few days so we made the call to hit the road again. Cheers mate it was an awesome experience. Good luck and good farming!

Carvarvon National Park is a 6 hr drive NW from Gayndah. We took the route through the towns of Mundubbera, Eidsvold, Cracow, Theodore, Moura, Bauhinia and Rolleston. The scenery consisted of barren vegetation stripped grazing property, bored and depressed cows, the QLD bottle tree, cotton plantations and dry eucalypt forest. 

Carnarvon Gorge is about 45min from Rolleston (last fuel stop so fill up). The access road is unsealed and would be inaccessible after rain. The gorge itself is an oasis, a fertile valley in the semi-arid heart of QLD. Towering white sandstone cliffs form a spectacular steep sided gorge with narrow vibrantly-coloured and lush side gorges.

The Carvarvon NP information centre was really helpful, sorted us out with a map and a plan for the next day. The Great Walk (86km) was temporarily closed so our next most exciting option was the 35km round trip to Battleship Spur – up, out and on top of the gorge. Why get up at sunrise when you can get up a couple of hours before it!? So up at 4.00am it was and wow, it was a good surprise to see that someone was just as nuts and keen to attempt the same hike in a day. With Mick as company we set off into the bush in the dark guided by our not to scale map and head torches. The first 10kms sees you criss-cross up through the bottom of the gorge. The trail had 16 creek crossings which were at one stage apparently well marked. We had a couple of moments losing the trail and ourselves in the dark. One critical moment of the journey was saved by the sunrise and we got back on the trail eventually and not too much time was lost. The recent March 2011 QLD floods had caused some damage to the trail. Some of the markers had been washed away and parts of the trail had detours. Not so easy to find in the dark with fading, flickering budget head torches…

There are many sites to check out along the way, the highlight for us being the Aboriginal rock art which adorns the sandstone overhangs at Cathedral Cave and the Art Gallery. The display of rock engravings, ochre stencils and free hand painting is talked up as some of the finest recent (pre colonisation/invasion) Aboriginal rock imagery in Australia.

Don’t miss this place if you’re ever nearby. Not just a beautiful walk or jaw dropping scenery, but a spiritual place to the local Indigenous people who first lived on this land.