Jen & Poppy - Magical Mutawintji

  Atop Byngnano Range - Mutawintji NP

Magical Mutawintji

Day 10 Sunday 17^th.

After a great campfire breakfast with a Billy of tea, we set off for the Homestead Gorge passing some beautiful aboriginal stencils and engravings to the start of the Rock holes loop track. The track took us up the side of the gorge and along, so that we could view these incredible rock holes from above. We made our way back down the rock face to the sandy bottom of the gorge again. We then forged our way up the gorge as far as we could, stopped only by the large water holes which still remained, about a meter under their usual embedded waterline marks. After retuning to the main gorge we scrambled up an ancient watercourse, which was etched into the rock face, dotted with pools, which ran down from the top of the range. Large groups of indigenous people, around a thousand at a time, have gathered here for thousands of years to trade, celebrate, birth and perform initiation ceremonies. This place has an amazing feeling!

The view from the top of this solid rock mountain was truly awesome. You could see for miles in every direction the, it was one of the highest place around. We started our decent, squeezing through tight rock crevices, abseiling and rock hopping down the dry creek beds. What a fantastic and fascinating 4 hours of solid walking, climbing, scrambling and stumbling. We arrived back at the campsite exhausted and fell into our chairs, kicking back, we simultaneously registered the ominous sky and decided to pack up the tents and head back to the Hill. With it looking like rain we couldn’t take the chance of being rained in for 14 days or more. The drive back to the Hill was easier than we expected. We saw a flockish/herd of emus and a massive wedge tail eagle feasting on a fresh kill. Seeing as it was almost sunset time, we headed to the top of the Line of Lode, we missed it once again, but not for the fact of being late this time but for being too early for once, can you believe it? On our return to BHAE, we were invited to dinner at Patrick's place, for a German come Asian inspired dish, very delicious bratt kartoffeln mitt schwinefleisch.

 

Stay tuned to the same bat station, at the same bat time, for the next exciting adventures from the now “crazy ones” (don’t worry, just a mild bout of BH fever)

Poppy & Jen