Carnarvon Gorge to the Blackdown Tableland

30 August
Our first call was to Carnarvon Gorge NP. We made an early start from Barcaldine and headed on east along the Capricorn Highway, through Jericho, Alpha and then Emerald (a turn around the Botanical Gardens, a tour de force considering they started in 1988) where we had information about a lovely spot called Higher Ground, some ten or so kilometres out of Emerald, where the lady sells magnificent tomatoes. It was a magic spot because she asked us “would you like to camp beside the river?” So we wound our way a further two kilometres along a private track, down through the scrub and under a lovely stand of tall trees beside the fast flowing Nogoa River (out of the Fairbairn Dam). The grass was mown, there was no-one around. It was heavenly after a week of caravan parks.

We had turned south now and were headed for the long range of hills over the horizon, with some excitement. It would be our first time in hills and gorges since leaving The Diamantina. Carnarvon Gorge is heralded as one of Queensland’s leading attractions, and so it proved. There is a caravan park loftily known as Takarraka Resort, and further on one of those “eco-ified” groups of sympathetic huts (lodges to the marketeers) that charge $220 a share, with pub food.

For those more energetic ones an 87 km walk takes you up out of the gorge and around through the high plateau country. Our new chum Max did this walk as they came west from Sydney, taking 5 days for the trip, with full packs and a new battery in the GPS. The gorge walk is a 20km return with several wonderful side trips into the Moss Garden, the Amphitheatre, Ward’s gorge, the aboriginal rock art and others. We confined ourselves to an excellent 14km walk. The weather was kind, with the temperature down around the 27C mark, and some cloud.

The tableland was basalt capped, with sandstone below. The basalt has now mostly eroded away and the river has cut deeply into the underlying sandstone to create a gorge about 300 metres wide, and perhaps that deep, with the side gorges varying from narrow clefts as at Wards, to broad valleys as with the art site. The main gorge walk criss crosses the gently flowing river about twenty times and there are delightful views of Livistonia palms amongst Sheoaks and Spotted Gums. The river bed is strewn with large boulders, much of it the original basalt materiel from the top, with the long, broken mast like tree trunks brought together into great tangles, by the fast flowing spate caused by the summer rains. We think there is a likeness to the younger valleys of perhaps Scandinavia, were it not for the layer of palms, a slash of greeny yellow through the more drab greygreens of the surrounding forest. The battlemented backcloth of the pale lime coloured sandstone encircles all.

Each of the walks into the side gorges was a special experience, The Amphitheatre has you clambering up steep staircases and through a narrow cleft deep in the cliff that leads to a cathedral sized eroded opening about 30 metres diameter but rising up and up to the tableland above. Ward’s Gorge you enter up beside a fall of water, along a creek bed beneath overhanging rock to a pool at the end. This is where four Ward brothers lived for many months each year, possum hunting. The Wards were the holders or owners of the land for half a century or more, and they worked with the State government in providing assistance and advice so the public could enjoy access, after the Park was gazetted in 1932. The aboriginal art site is unusual (but shares this characteristic with sites in NSW) in the interest shown in the rare but sometimes seen vulva. Vulvas are carved hundreds of times and some with enthusiasm. Fertility as always is not far from the mind. This is the dry season, end of winter, when the grasses are turned to hay and the risk of fire is high. Access to the wilder parts of the park is closed because of fire risk and there was a lot of smoke from the active burning off that councils here indulge in. They have a very different attitude to roadside fuel loads than that held by councils in Victoria.

With the coast now in our mind’s eye we moved on after two nights at the exorbitant rate of $38, and headed north again to Blackwater for fuel. We travelled beside a magnificent tableland that is the Blackdown National Park, rising 600 metres above us,and although early in the day we decided we would make the steep climb and explore and enjoy the cooler air up there. So began another wonderful little chapter.

Look and ye shall find. Without the enthusiasm and research skills of my illustrious navigator I would have steamed past so much of this magnificent country. You do have to tease it out, ask the locals, never pass an Information centre, have all the books you can with you, and stop and go back. It must be about women doing the searching out of elusive fruits while men have their focus on the game over the horizon!