Piccaninny Gorge Walk, Purnululu National Park - May 2004

Deep into Piccaninny Gorge.

Way back in early May 2004 Sam and I were in the middle of one of our numerous Northern Australia road trips. We'd been up through the Northern Territory and were now heading over to Broome. To break the drive from Darwin to Broome up a bit we thought that we would re visit Purnululu National Park as it had been a few years since we'd been in there. Now having been there before we were looking for something a little different on this visit so we decided to walk out to Piccaninny Gorge to camp for a couple of days and explore a little. Being a Feral adventure though things didn't really go as planned.

Cathedral Cave.

In hindsight we probably bit off a bit more than we could chew today. Being early May the temperatures in The Kimberly were still very much on the hot side, which was compounded by the fact that we didn't start our walk in until almost lunch time. Our morning having been spent bumping our way into the park along the rough as guts access track as well as organising our permit. By the time we set off it was already stinking hot and we'd spent the morning sitting in the cool air conditioned Troopie. Initially though all was pretty good as we followed the tourist path out to Cathedral Gorge, the cavern at the end of the gorge was particularly impressive today made even better by the fact that we had it to ourselves. The water hole in the gorge even had a bit of water in it on this visit and while the scum on the surface made for an interesting photo it definitely wasn't something that I'd want to dip my toe into.

The pond scum in Cathedral Cave looked pretty good, but I don't think I'd want to dip my toe into it.

Leaving Cathedral Gorge we retraced our steps and then, when we hit Piccaninny Creek, left the tourist track and struck out along the dry sandy creek bed. Walking Piccaninny Creek meant either plowing through soft sand or if we were lucky, walking along some very rough eroded rocky ribs, neither of these surfaces were a favourite of Sam's. After a couple of hours walking I was beginning to realise that we weren't going to make it to my intended camp by dark, so I had to come up with plan B. Stopping under a shady cliff beside a rare waterhole I mentioned to Sam that I didn't think that we would make it to camp before dark. Plan B involved me leaving Sam at the waterhole while I grabbed her day pack and continued on into the gorge as far as the day would allow, I'd return before dark and we would camp here by the waterhole and return to the Troopie tomorrow, it all sounded pretty easy if you say it quick enough!

Wandering up Piccaninny Creek in the early afternoon heat, it was around here that Sam decided to sit a wait for me while I took off with a day pack.

So setting off again now unencumbered by my big pack I hooked in. My first objective was to get to a spot called The Elbow which is the entrance to Piccaninny Gorge. Sure enough after less than an hour the creek swung from a north easterly direction to a north westerly direction and I was passing The Elbow. The scenery from here went up many notches as the beehive domes for which Purnululu closed in on the bed of the creek. After checking out Black Waterfall I continued on up the gorge, sometimes walking the soft sand, sometimes cutting the corners in the meandering creek, crossing the spinifex covered sand banks.

Black Waterfall marks the spot that the walk starts to get really spectacular.

A little shade was welcome.

I was heading upstream towards a spot called The Fingers but there was no way I was going to make it all the way, by late afternoon I'd say I was around halfway between the Black Waterfall and The Fingers but it was time to turn around and head back to Sam otherwise I wouldn't make it back to her before dark. After taking a photo, and filing the spot away for a future re-visit I reluctantly turned and started to retrace my walk back through the stunning gorge. Coming out of the gorge into more open country near The Elbow I knew I was getting fairly close to Sam, eventually turning up to find her sitting on the cool sand in the shade reading a book. 

Piccaninny Gorge is too much for my limited vocabulary so you'll have to just appreciate the old photos.

I'd just decided that I'd better start heading back, I can still feel the heat now.

I was looking pretty second hand by now and basically walked into the small waterhole with my water purifier, stuck one end in my mouth and started pumping. I'd had enough water on the walk but it was good to get to a spot were I didn't have to ration. After drinking more than my fill of H2O I mentioned to Sam that we had two options, we could camp here and walk out in the morning or we could head back this evening. The advantage of the morning was that it'd be light the whole way, the advantage of this evening being that it'd be a lot cooler and we had the comfy bed in the Troopie to look forward to. I wasn't in much doubt as to what Sam would want and soon enough we were shouldering our packs and heading off into the late afternoon sun. Our walk back was fairly uneventful although we had to be a bit careful on the eroded rocky ribs, this wasn't the place for a fall. The other navigational challenge in the dark was picking where to leave the creek bed to get back to the Cathedral Gorge Car Park where the Troopie was waiting for us, the trick here was to keep an eye for when Piccaninny Creek swung South Sou East in an area of encroaching beehive domes. Thankfully my moonlight navigation went off without a hitch and we arrived back at the Troopie in time for a very late dinner. That night we were treated to a massive thunderstorm so it may have been a good thing that we weren't camped out in the confines of the gorge I suppose, the storms certainly bought the creeks up enough to enliven our trip out of the park the next day.

The Dirt.

The walk into The Fingers is normally a three day walk so as you might expect this was a fairly tough day walk, even though I didn't make it all the way into The Fingers I still walked around 20 kilometres on this hard walk. The normal go is to walk into the gorge and camp on day 1, explore The Fingers on day 2, and then walk out on day 3. The walking along Piccaninny Creek, while being more or less flat, is surprisingly hard as the sand is soft and the rocks are uneven and in some cases jagged. We walked in early May and it was pretty hot so it would pay to walk early in the morning to beat the heat, I've also been up here in November and that was stupid hot, think high 40˚ and heaps of humidity, too hot for me to do anything but easy day walks. I'm not sure about current conditions but back in the day there were no facilities at all on this walk and no signage or track marking - it was a true wilderness walk. As far as I know there are no published notes for this walk.

Relevant Posts.

Broome to Darwin, 1986.

Looking towards The Elbow.

On meeting back up with Sam in the late afternoon I reckon I dropped the height of the waterhole by a couple of inches.