Will we get there?

Monday 24th August

We’re leaving Carnarvon this morning and heading to Gascoyne Jnc, which is en route to our only committed date on this trip, a concert and BBQ at Mount Augustus.

Today we’re travelling with previous travelling companions, Brad and Denise and Alan and Sandy. We are booked in for a couple of nights.

Gascoyne Jnc has changed significantly since we first came here nearly 30 years ago. At that time the river crossings on the Gascoyne River were wet (and often very soft) crossings.

The Gascoyne river floods regularly, 1960 was particularly bad. By 2016 a plan to bridge the river had been put together and the bridge(s) built.

The river is about 900 metres wide at this point so the bridge is close to a kilometer.

When we were here in 1997 most of the community buildings, including the pub and the caravan park were down at the lower level next to the river.

After another flood caused significant damage the buildings and caravan park have all been relocated to higher ground and it is now a very smart and tidy community.

The Gascoyne is fairly typical of these outback river systems, wide, muddy, often dried out after the rains they can become serious raging torrents that often claim lives.

Having just had some rain the roads will need tomorrow are slowly being opened.

Wednesday 26 August

Today we can leave Gascoyne Junction because the roads to Mount Augustus have been opened. We have about 300ks to do today but the roads are in surprisingly good condition, this is due to the fact that the roads have been closed stopping vehicles from cutting them up while they’re soft.

There is plenty of evidence for why they were closed, last week these creek crossings were a metre deep!

We have been to Mount Augustus (MA) several times before from most directions but it has changed a fair bit since we were last here. The number of caravan and camping spots has increased considerably.

We have planned to be here for five days and on Saturday night there is to be a fairly big BBQ for the annual Rock Fest, in this case the ‘Rock’ is MA not a musical ‘fest’.

There are some good walks on and around the rock and we’ve been to the top previously when we were younger! The ‘rock’ is known in WA as the largest monolith in the world but;

The next day we went to Cattle Pool, a few ks from Mt Augustus for morning tea and a chance to use my selfie stick for the first time!!

There is normally 1.5 – 2.0 metres of water in this pool!

“Mount Augustus is widely claimed in tourist promotional and information literature as the “world’s largest monolith” but the claim does not originate from the geological literature, nor is the claim substantiated by any other scholarly research.”

This morning we woke up to the threat of rain coming in from the west over Mt Augustus, we did get a few spots but nothing serious.

We’ve walked on the ‘rock’ every day and it is extremely dry which is remarkable considering the river crossings above were less than a 100ks to the south.

Amazingly, some plants manage to find sufficient moisture to survive.

The next day we watched the full moon go down and as the sun came up over the ‘rock’;

Today we discovered this shrub in an extremely dry gully and when we looked inside the flowers we saw that virtually every flower had its resident bugs!

Nature is amazing.

Looking north from Mt Augustus.

Tonight there is music and a ‘4 course BBQ’ which we have paid for. The meal was amazing. Pat’s ‘gluten free’ requirement was well catered for. There was no shortage of food, in fact, I think we were all more than amply supplied! The only problem was that I had difficulty hearing the conversations due to the background noise. They catered for 106 and it was all very well managed. We didn’t realise that this event has been going for 11 years – we may need to come back again!

Tomorrow we begin the journey home.