6/7/14 – We found an awesome spot to “hide” last night a very old gravel pit up the Lennon Gorge Rd. So peaceful away from the crowds. We had a leisurely morning before backing up and heading towards Tunnel Creek.
The trek into Windjana Gorge and Tunnel Creek is obviously a popular one. The road was very corrugated, bull dust, ruts, dips, in general pretty rough.
We had heard from lots of other people that Tunnel Creek was really good. Well was it worth the hype? Yep it’s pretty damn good, well we thought it was great. We had a ball taking photos and exploring the tunnel, we lost track of time and were in there for 3hrs, took water but no food so we were starving by the time we came out. It’s a lot bigger in size than we expected. Some places were very dark and you needed the torch to light the way. Other areas had natural light coming in that lit up the tunnel walls with golden colour, awesome.
The tunnel is 750m long (1.5km return) and 3 – 12m high. You have to do a little bit of rock hopping to get in but then the walking is pretty easy. You do have to wade through water and how deep it is would depend on how early you are in the dry season. For us it was up to our knees. You need a good bright torch, then head it the tunnel and explore.
At the other end, turn left, do a bit of rock hopping to find some rock art.
The place got very busy, earlier in the morning would be better. We went down the road a bit and found a nice place to have a late lunch.
We tried to find a hiding spot but alas there was none that we felt comfortable with staying at. So we headed into Windjana Gorge camping area. Well what a mistake that was, the place is packed and totally disorderly, apparently last night was worst. No allocated sites, which if they did they could fit more in and it would be less jammed up together. People who don’t have genies are camping in the generator camping area, where we are as there is no room at the other camping area. A lady camped next to us who is a Western Australian actually said she felt embarrassed that one of the show case camping area and gorges was like this, she said it was all money grabbing. There are 3 showers in the men and females for the whole campsite, including the groups. We have been told it is just a trickle, so again we will be using ours. On a positive note the camping area is right next to the some of the cliffs of the range that light up beautifully at sunset. We are close to the start of the walk so not far to start our early walk tomorrow.
