Wow, I have been a busy busy traveler since I left Brisbane. The bulk of it, however, has been a lot of driving to a series of one or two night stops all over central Queensland. So, this post is going to be a mish mash of all those. First, from Brisbane I drove roughly nine hours west to Carnarvon Gorge in Carnarvon National Park.

It was a very long day of driving and I arrived to my camp right after sunset. Maybe an hour or so before arriving I stopped on the side of the road seen in the pic above to, uh, take care of some personal business. When I got out of the car, suddenly about two dozen kangaroo heads popped up out of the grass to see what was happening. Haha! Too bad I didn’t have the camera at the ready. And right before reaching camp I got treated to this pretty amazing sunset.

I came all this way to hike the Carnarvon Gorge. Luckily the camp is only about three miles from the trailhead. This gorge was actually kind of strange. Beautiful grassland, eucalyptus trees all over, but also some kind of palm tree all over, and what looks like pine trees. It’s like three different types of forests got crammed together. The pine trees turned out to be sheoak trees, not at all related, but they look similar.

The hike was fun though. There were six river crossings involved. They threw rocks in the water to make it easy, but I managed to dunk one foot in anyway. Who put that gravity there?!

I loved getting the views of these towering cliffs all along the way too.

The orchids were small and subtle, but they were definitely a nice touch.

The main attraction in Carnarvon Gorge was the so called Art Gallery. It’s an aboriginal rock art site. Lots of handprints, shields, boomerangs, emu tracks, one goanna, and the nets represent that people were buried here. It looks a bit cluttered perhaps, but it was really fascinating.

The squiggly carving below represents the rainbow serpent, the main character in the aboriginal creation story.

The next fascinating side hike in the gorge was to the amphitheatre. Geology can be amazing sometimes. If you walk through that narrow slot in the cliff face (I did) you come into this incredible little grotto with ferns and moss. It was nice to just sit in there by myself for a while and take a rest.

The final side hike was to the Moss Garden. Water filters slowly through the sandstone above until it gets stopped in this little grotto of granite, which makes the moss grow like crazy. The waterfall got a three on the gusher scale, but it was very atmospheric.

My camp was one of those RV type campsites, but I stayed in one of the safari tents. When I got back from the hike the kangaroos were right next to my tent munching on the grass. And after sunset, the dingos started howling like crazy all around the camp. They did that most of the night. What an absolutely incredible thing to experience!

The next morning it was another eight or so hours drive northeast to Eungella National Park, specifically, Broken River. I planned to come here originally only because this is supposedly a great place to spot platypus. I arrived at just the right time, dusk. I went to all the viewing platforms along the river, but only saw one platypus and he was so quick that I only managed to get one blurry pic. I think that’s actually pretty good for this area though, and considering I was only here for one night I felt really lucky.

I walked back to the river in the morning before leaving hoping for more platypus, but I didn’t see any. Oh well! I’m glad I got to see so many of them when I was in Tasmania. On the way out I stopped at the Sky Window for an incredible view of Eungella.

About twenty miles down the mountain is Finch Hatton Gorge. I read that the gorge was closed, but thought I’d try my luck since I was passing by anyway. It turned out that only the last quarter of the trail was closed, the hike up to Araluen Cascades was open. Awesome! It looked more like a waterslide than a waterfall, but it scored a nine on the gusher scale.

From Finch Hatton Gorge it was almost a six hour drive to the town of Ingham, where I stayed the next two nights. This part of Queensland is mostly sugarcane farms and I drove through many miles of cane fields on this part of the journey. Ingham is pretty sedate, not a whole lot happening, but it’s the best jumping off point for the two gigantic waterfalls I want to see. First was Wallaman Falls in Girringun National Park.

The views of the falls and the park from above were awesome! I was really thankful that the trail to the base of the falls was open though. It was a very steep walk down and more importantly, back up. The view at the bottom was definitely worth the effort though. And I was treated to a double rainbow as well. The second rainbow you can just make out next to the water and above the other rainbow. In addition to winning a nine on the gusher scale, Wallaman also has the distinction of being the tallest waterfall in Australia at 268meters (879ft).

This final excursion was quite an adventure. Roughly half way between Ingham and my next stop, I turned up Kirrama Range Road, which was over thirty miles of dirt, gravel, potholes, rocks, and some mud. It was a slow challenging drive in the Yaris I’ve been driving the last few weeks. A few times I had to stop and get out to walk parts of the road and make sure they were actually doable. Luckily the worst obstacle I faced had a good work around.

Finally, I made it to the Blencoe Falls Campground, but I got stopped by a rough patch that my car definitely wouldn’t have gotten past. Luckily, I was only about 500ft from the trailhead, so I just parked in a little turnout and I was on my way. There was a sign at the start of the trailhead warning about snakes and to watch where you step and don’t approach them or provoke them and blah blah blah. Then I start walking and the whole trail is covered with knee high grass growing up and thick grass laying down all over the path. How am I supposed to watch for snakes when I can’t even see the ground I’m stepping on? Most of the hike was pretty nerve wracking.

I didn’t step on any snakes. Whew! I did startle a few kangaroos and birds along the way though. Eventually I came out to the Herbert River Gorge Lookout. This place is really remote!

And just around the corner from that was the Blencoe Falls Lookout. This is what I really came to see. It’s hard to tell from the picture because it’s kinda far away, but this nine gusher was awesome! And loud! Totally worth the sketchy drive and venomous snake death fears.

This is also one of those cases of confusing national park borders. Blencoe Falls is in another part of Girringun National Park, but most of the drive is in Kirrama National Park. Whatever. It was another thirty miles of that dirt, gravel, pothole, rock, mud road to get back out of there. I did stop at this nice viewpoint somewhere in the Kirrama National Park section to stretch my legs and take a break though. I felt pretty accomplished for making it all the way to the falls and back. In an SUV, no problem. In a Yaris, it was not an easy place to get to.

Once I got back to the civilized paved roads, I turned north and drove the rest of the way to my next stop. This time I’ll be able to settle in one place for a few days and do a lot less driving for a bit. Until the next post…