Knox Gorge, Joffre Falls

Sunday 18^th May 2008

Katie is keen to do her school work but Holly is a reluctant student and this morning was more evidence of this. We were concentrating on the 7 Times Table – I decided we’d better do the tricky ones first ‘cos we may not get through many more!

The other two families were having relatively quiet days today which meant the kids were all free to play. I took advantage of the girls being busy to head off to Knox Gorge without them because it sounded tricky and I didn’t want to ‘over-gorge’ them when there will be so many more coming up!

I negotiated with Paul to stay another night because I wanted to make sure we saw as much as possible and also I found out from the camp hosts that Hancock Gorge has a thing called a ‘spider walk’ which I thought the girls would be interested in (more on that tomorrow) so we needed another day.

These gorges are amazing because they more or less appear from nowhere. From ground level you can almost miss them because they are just huge holes in the ground where the water has worked away at the rock over ridiculously long periods of time until now there are these 60m or so deep gouges in the landscape. Some places are wide and full of vegetation of various kinds while others are much narrower with not much sun coming in at any time of day.

I had to scramble down a very steep slope littered with loose shale and met a couple of people coming up but after that I was on my own. Once in the gorge, finding the path wasn’t always straight forward and sometimes involved climbing through greenery that perched on rocks with water sliding through beneath. Since it was the middle of the day there was a fair amount of sun in there which kept me warm (not hot, though) and I tried not to hurry or think about how Paul and the girls were coping.

Once again I was blown away by the amazing colours – even in the water there were new reds, greens and blues that glittered in the sunlight.

The gorge ended for me at a narrow opening that dropped away dramatically down into another gorge (Red Gorge) but this section is recommended for those with ropes and climbing equipment only so I just took some photos and admired it before heading back the way I’d come. I built my own ‘chinese house’ (so named by the girls) which is a pile of the flat rocks of diminishing size stacked on top of each other.

I stopped off at Joffre Falls lookout and was glad I’d chosen Knox for my walk because at Joffre the walk was around the rim so not very challenging or interesting. The lookout had a view down into the gorge and pool which was impressive but with the direction of the sun I couldn’t get a decent photo and I couldn’t make out if it was possible to get down there anyway.

The camp was deserted when I got back so I drove round to Fortescue Falls to see if I could offer the others a lift – they were there which was lucky considering I’d made the climb down already. Katie declared she wanted to try the Class 4 walk (to Circular Pool) so she and I set off but when I checked that she was prepared to go all the way and climb up out the other end it was a different story. She wanted a bit of excitement but I wasn’t prepared to deal with the fallout when she realised how far she had to go and how much effort it was going to take. Much easier to go with the others – in air-conditioned comfort – and she’d be able to play with her friends that much sooner (which was Holly’s plan, too).

I managed to get both girls under the camp shower (which was only warm because of how quickly everything cools down once the sun goes down) but getting rid of their orange ‘bad fake tan’ look was another story – particularly on those troll feet! Despite copious amounts of soap and using up most of the water (with a makeshift canopy around them to preserve their fledgling modesty) they were not much cleaner than when we’d started – at least they smelt better!

The inside of the caravan is another orange zone but I’m trying not to think about it too much because there will only be more to come.

I made curry for dinner – definitely a staple of our travelling diet – and we all rugged up warm against the night’s chill.