Day 3 would see us back on the tourist trail for the most part. We’d planned to get up to Battleship Spur, nearly 600m above our camp, before the heat of the day. Then check out Boowinda Gorge and it’s side creeks
Both were listed as star attractions. The young couple we had shared camp with came back raving about how beautiful Boowinda Gorge was and a steady stream of people had made their way either up to or down from the spur on their journey along the great walk.
So up we go. The path up to the spur starts up Boowinda gorge but we don’t really take notice as we’re nervously excited about the haul up to the spur.
A side gully acts as a pass out of the gorge. It’s steep, reminiscent of the scramble out of Tigersnake canyon. but once through the lower cliff line a well maintained trail makes it’s way up and along an amazingly varied spur.
Think the Thuratt Spires with a tourist trail…
Wide open grassland alternates with almost razorback spur. Fine white sandstone changes to conglomerate and an out crop what appears to my uneducated eye as quartzite. Speculation around the geology distracts from the slog up.
And the views from the top?
Now back down for lunch in the cool of Boowinda gorge.
Running on a high we start making our way up the gorge.
Think of walking up the Wollemgambe. Only it’s dry as a nuns nasty and instead of sand it’s littered with baby head sized river stones. And the river stones haven’t been tumbled enough to make them smooth so they are jaggered. And they move beneath your feet. And the bigger ones give false hope with 3 or 4 holding firm then the next rolls just to mock your ankles.
Still so many Carnarvon glamour shot are from Boowinda gorge.
We press on.
Several times we consider just turning around but we’re a stubborn couple.
I guess the PC term would be “determined” but it was pure stubbornness (and a view of our white slot at the start we glimpsed from the Spur track) that kept us going.
Finally we get to the junction towards the top of the bloody Boowinda gorge and by some miracle there’s clear running water. Not much but more than we’ve seen in the side creeks since Wards Canyon.
We take the right branch. It’s a low quality slot but it has clear flowing water. So there’s that.
We get to a point we could have scrambled in from the top (It would have been much easier) but it got far too steep for us the reach the mysterious white walls a few hundred metres up the escarpment.
We retreat back and try the right branch. It was shit
We trudge back down and check out all the side creeks along the way. Some had canyons like sections but after the quality slot canyons of yesterday they were a major disappointment.
Back down past the Spur exit and I don’t know if it was the different light or just we were paying more attention but we had to admit the bottom was nicer than we originally gave it credit for.
Like, if you had never been in a proper slot canyon before you’d be impressed
If you are going to do Carnarvon gorge try a cooler month and hope for a good bit of rain in the days before you get here.
Finally out of what my mind I will always call Bloody Boowinda Gorge we paused for a bite to eat. All the trudging over loose river stones had zapped our energy.
It would have been easy just to return to camp but it was barely 4:30pm and there was another long gully about a kilometre down stream that had a name (At least on one map we had stumbled across) so we couldn’t help ourselves and went for a look.
The gully was scrubby and hard going but it keep promising to canyon up just up ahead. So we pressed on.
We trudged on until we started to loose light and so left this intriguing chasm to its secrets and made our way back to camp.
sleepwhenwearedead 