Exploring Expedition National Park

For our long weekend during Easter, we decided to head out on a mission for a weekend of camping.  We headed to Expedition National Park, it is 2hrs North from Chinchilla and 2hrs West from Taroom on a 90km 4WD track.

DAY ONE

We were a bit late getting our shit together, nothing unusual there, so we did not think we could make it to the campsite we were initially wanting to get to before dark, so we set up at Lake Murphy for the night.

Lake Murphy in all its' marshy glory

Enough stuff? Seriously there was no room at all for anything else.  I did say to Michael, "How do parents do this? New found respect for our olds!"



The wagon loaded up.




Cool looking insect



The hunter gather with his new camp oven, making beef strog - so civilised!



Cooking dinner, and making a fire.



Washing the dinner dishes and packing up for the night (NB: it was a bit after 7pm and mosquito central!!)

DAY TWO

After a lovely night sleeping in the tent, a bit hot if anything to complain about, but just lovely.  We had a nice breakfast, packed up out gears, syringed Eak's ear again because his ear generates enough earwax for ten people and causes him hearing loss and pain.  We headed off for the remaining 90kms in towards the National Park, we were wanting to camp at Robinson Gorge.

We ran into a farmer that owns the 80,000 acres backing onto the Gorge, these are his cattle that he only sees twice a year.  Crazy!

Run with the wild horses?

Cattle Dip pool - she is a long way down you need ropes to get there for a swim, from up here.

Cooking sausages, and the date loaf.

DAY THREE

We met with some of the other campers, they all seemed to be packing up so we were concerned that the had heard of bad weather so were leaving, the 4wd track in becomes impassable with heavy rains so if it did rain we could have become stranded!  While it was early and not hot, we went for a walk down to Robinson Gorge (about 2hr round trip) .

Robinson Gorge.



 

Bag-shelter Moth, Processionary Catterpillars (Ochrogaster lunifer)

Snake skin........ but no snake

The floor of Robinson Gorge. 

END DAY THREE

The weather forecast was average with rain and thunderstorms, the problem was that the access track becomes impassable once wet and if we stayed the night we could have been stuck for 24 hours or more. We had a lovely dinner, all tucked up in bed reading our books and I was yabbering away to Eak, he then says to me "shhhhhuuuussshhhh"

Shahn - "what is it? what's wrong?"

Eak - "Do you hear that?"

Shahn - listening intently for a bit "Nup"

*HOWLING*

Shahn - quiet tones "what is that?"

Eak - "sounds like a pack of Dingoes"

*continued HOWLING, more replies from other dingoes now*

I look at Eak, he looks at me.  I feel like my heart is going to beat right out of my chest.

Eak - "what do you want to do?"

Shahn - "holy shit, lets get out of here! I won't be able to sleep anyway, we can get back to Chinchilla by midnight.  Keen?"

Lets just say we packed up the whole campsite in less than 15 minutes and we were OUT OF THERE!! I know that dingoes seem limited to being interested in children but New Zealand doesn't have anything (except people) that can kill you, I sure as hell wasn't going to take any chances.  We were also the only ones camping there that night and about an hour away from the nearest house and two hours away from the main highway.

As it was, we saw this little bugger on the road. One of the culprits!



Long story short, cool weekend!

xxxx Shahn & Eak