The Bungle Bungle....Purnululu National Park

It took us 2hrs to drive the 56km track into Purnulul National Park.  The road itself was in pretty good condition but its narrow, windy and hilly with lots of creek crossings....actually we counted 20!
                           Just one of the 20 crossings, and Scott keeping an eye on the water level

The unusual orange and black striped domes, often referred to as the "bee hives" covers an area of 450 square kms were turned into the Purnululu National Park in 1987 and quickly became world famous.  By 2003 it was classified as a World Heritage area due to its important geological value and exceptional beauty.  The park itself is nearly 240,000ha in size.

                                      Kids getting ready to watch the sunset over the Bungles

There are two campgrounds in the park, Kurrajong and Walardi.  We stayed at Walardi but would probably recommend Kurrajong as it has views of the bungle range and is more central to all the walks and sites. 

Talking about sites our first on the agenda was Cathedral Gorge, a huge natural amphitheatre carved out of the rock by the massive volumes of water forced through each wet.  We were determined to be the only ones in there, so set off on the 1.5km walk early and arrived in the cathedral by 7.15am.   

We played around with the acoustics, firstly by belting out the Australian National anthem at the tops of our lungs, (luckily we were the only ones there!) and then by experimenting with other random tests.  For instance Hannah stood on the opposite side to us, which is about 100m away, and said a sentence as if she was talking to someone next to her.  Amazingly we could hear every word she said. 

This is where you really need a wide angle camera to capture the whole picture.  I don't!

While Ben was playing around in the sand he discovered he could make an unusual echo around the cathedral by thumping his fist in the ground.  We loved spending time in this awesome natural amphitheatre soaking up the atmosphere.  The walk in and out was nice too, meandering along the white sandy creek bed surrounded by very green spinifex grass, then getting up close to those famous sandstone structures along the domes walk.

                                                                View from the lookout

                         This is the strange moonscape looking formations of the Piccaninny creek walk. 

Our friends Tex and Julie turned up the next day so we did the Mini Palms and Echidna Chasm walks together. 

Hannah pointing out the sedimentary rock layers along the way.

Below are photos of Echidna Chasm. The walk in was fun, climbing over boulders and looking up at some that had not made it to the ground.  The walls are so high that it's quite dark at the bottom. The gap in the walls gets really narrow (less than a metre wide) and lights up when the midday sun filters through. 

We enjoyed the Bungle Bungle, but even though we were there in the middle of winter, late July, it still gets very hot during the day.  We made sure we set off on our walks early as by 10am it was up around 30 degrees.  But be warned the temp's drop dramatically at night....we got down to 5 degrees! 

By the next post we should have left WA and entered the Northern Territory!