The bumper sticker reads "I survived the road into the Bungle Bungle". Its 53km of dirt, ups and downs and river crossings and bends. It took us an hour and a half and that was just to the visitors centre, but boy it was worth it. Another 45 mins south and we were at the carpark for Picaninny Gorge. The scenery is breathtaking. Red and grey striped rock, weathered into hills with domed tops that resemble huge beehives. There is very little vegetation on them and the path that leads through them had been back burned at the end of last season, so even though there were green shoots we had a great view of the rocks.
Lucky for us the temperature was less than 30 as it was still early. I could imagine that this area could reach 50 in the summer with the sun baking down on the rocky gorges. The path led us towards Cathedral Gorge, up a creek bed with only a few pools of water left after the wet. We saw a long thin black Whip snake at the edge of a pool and there were at least 15 cane toads around him. Sadly the toads reached the park about a year and a half ago and they are everywhere around the creeks. We saw many at the river crossings when we were driving in bit I'm not convinced that Evan managed to squash any with the car. It's the first cane toads we've seen. We've reached the front. Here at Spring Creek just outside the NP there are no toads, but it's only a matter of time.
Cathedral Gorge was massive and spectacular, I'm not sure how else to describe it. During the wet the water must pour down in massive waterfalls from the Bungles a hundred metres above and pound into the pool.
The day was heating up, however S and I walked up to the lookout for a great view over more Bungles. On the way we saw a pair of Rainbow Bee Eaters (birds) which I was very excited by as I'd wanted to see some when we were at Hamelin Pool. They flew to a dead branch, flitted around and were gone.
I drove out of the NP and that was much better than being a passenger.
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