2006/07 Australia trip - Bungle Bungles |
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Thursday July 6th
The day warmed up quickly too. We were moving on to the park’s other campground, Walardi, as we wanted to see the other 
side of the park. First though we stopped at the Walanginjdji Lookout. This gives a grand view of the Bungle Bungle Range to the east, but would probably be better visited at sunset to get the most out of the view. The hills around the lookout are covered with giant pincushions of spinifex grass. I sometimes wonder if there are little feet under those pincushions as, although you can find a route through the spinifex to some attraction, when you turn to come back there’s never a path. It seems like they close ranks behind you.
We found a good spot in the Walardi camground, and left our chairs to reserve the spot while we went off to Piccaninny Creek to do some exploring. This is the area that has the giant “beehive” domes that people associate with the Bungle Bungles. The reality is far more impressive than what you get from photographs: the domes are much larger than we expected and more colourful. In between the domes are pour-offs, waterfalls, termite mounds, caves, potholes, and giant spinifex mounds. The creeks between the domes still had pools of water from the wet season, so there was plenty of bird life to be seen: bee eaters and tiny “quiet doves”, a quarter the size of a European pigeon.
We hiked around the domes in the morning, and then into Cathedral Gorge in the afternoon. I wasn’t expecting too much as 
there are many “cathedral gorges” around the world, but this is one of those places where your jaw drops. The walk-in is impressive, with great red cliffs on either side of the stream but then you turn the corner and you are in this vast open space with a pond in the centre and overhanging cliffs almost blocking the sky. A pair of great arches lead back into cave areas. With those arches it looks more like a mosque than a cathedral. There’s one black area on the cliff wall and that’s where the waterfall crashes into the pool in the wet season, when the entire gorge is submerged. I was climbing around the boulders and met a ginger cat, what the Australians would call a feral cat, one that looks like a pet, but has probably lived in the wild all its life. It disappeared into the darkness of the cave.