Day 27 – Sunday 15 August 2021 – 48km

It was really windy during the night and still blowing hard as the sun rose. We packed and let the tyre pressures down. All the people we have spoken to have told us that the road into Cobbold Gorge is pretty rough & corrugated. They were right. The dirt road winds up and down through creek crossings, we do come across a road works team grading & rolling the road, we are thankful for that smooth section. There are lots of cattle grazing, some close to the road, some walking on the road we have to slow right down for. There are lots of vehicles and caravans coming the other way and we get overtaken by two caravans and a car, I am driving very slowly and it takes nearly two hours for us to complete the 48km in.

At last the gates of Cobbold Gorge welcome us & we check in to our van spot & set up. Next is a swim in the infinity edge pool looking out over the dam, very nice indeed. We have lunch at our van before heading down to start our Cobbold Gorge tour. There are more than 60 people lined up & we split into five groups & load onto three 4wd buses. The trip to the gorge is about 5km by dirt road & we cross a wide sandy river bed before reaching a really big shed where the buses are parked to provide some shade.

We start with a short talk on the history and then walk a short way to a floating pontoon with some narrow flat bottomed aluminium boats tied up. They have an electric motor on each end of them. Fourteen of us fit snugly on the boat and we need to do a bit of re-balancing to keep the weight distribution even. The electric motors are very quiet and we spot a couple of freshwater crocodiles sunning themselves before we enter the gorge proper. Stunning is the best word to describe it, nature at its best. The gorge is very narrow & gets narrower the further we progress up it. The rock is highly polished in places from the swirling water when the creek is in flood. In some sections there are bands of exposed rounded rocks from the sedimentary layers.  There are lots of small fish swimming, but no water birds inside the gorge.  The gorge twists and turns & each corner we turn seems more stunning than the last.  As we reach the top of the gorge we need to stop & wait for the previous boat to come back out. The 2 boats are very narrow but the gorge is even narrower. We touch rock in lots of places with the boat as we pass through some very narrow sections.  The trip back is just as spectacular and we enjoy every twist & turn.

After we disembark we start a bush walk and our guide explains some bush tucker food, the different plant & foods that can be eaten plus the different trees and names of them. The walk is very nice & our guide stops & tells the story of Corbett, a man that died not far from here with an aboriginal spear in him more than 150 years ago. His grave is not far away through the bush. We climb up onto the sandstone escarpment and marvel at the beauty that surround us. Our path takes us next to an amazing glass bridge over the gorge. (The only glass bottomed bridge that exists in Australia). We are all given covers to put over our shoes so that we don’t scratch the glass. The views along the gorge are stunning. Our path takes us back down a narrow split in the sandstone before we emerge from the bush not far from the big shed & the buses.

Dinner is at the onsite Bistro tonight, on the deck next to the pool. The food was excellent.  A beautiful star lit night, a romantic walk back to our Karavan.   Another great day to be very thankful for.