July 31

Purnululu and Wolfe Creek Crater

Posted by on July 31, 2015 in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

From Kununarra we have travelled south to the Bungle Bungles, or more correctly the Purnululu National Park World Heritage Area.  

Southern Osmand Range, the Bungles

 
  
We had a minor crisis along the way when we realised that we had forgotten to top up our dwindling wine supply before leaving Kununarra, only one bottle for three nights in the Bungles. Ah well, we could top up in Halls Creek on the way to Wolfe Creek Crater.  Or so we thought!   It turns out that Halls Creek is one of the top end dry communities where alcohol sales are restricted and much to our horror the bottle shop sold only lite beers.
The last 53km of the drive into the ‘Bungles’ is pretty tough going; deep permanent river crossings, serious corrugations (I thought the car was going to shake its self apart!), and dips and plunges to rival the best roller coasters.  All good fun to get to an amazing and practically deserted camp site in the park. A brilliant place to spend three days. Walking in the morning and school and domestic bliss for the evening, given the lack of wine!

Corrugations… travel at 60+ kph to skip over them and risk the dips and holes at speed, dilemma of off road driving!

 

we hit this water hole a little top fast… deeper than expected!


The southern end of the park has has an extraordinary array of banded sandstone domes . FYI, they are caused by the presence or absence of Cyanobacteria that grows in the layers of sandstone where the moisture accumulates alternating with orange bands of oxidised iron compounds that have dried out too quickly for the Cyanobacteria to grow. The northern end of the Park / Osmand range has massive spectacular gorges cut into the Rock faces.

   

Echidna gorge with amazing light, check out the size of the people

Walking out of Ecidna Gorge

 

Conglomerate rocks fallen into the chasm…. rounded river stones squashed in mud

Home sweet home, amazing camp site in Purnuululu

‘The facilities’, toilet and running water, heaven!

After three days in the Bungles we travelled further south to the edge of the Tanami desert on the Tanami track, the famous off road route to Alice Springs. We overnighted at the foot of the Wolfe Creek Crater, where 300,000 years ago a large meteor left its mark and more recently a dodgy horror movie was based. This is the second largest meteor crater impact site in the world, and is a pretty impressive crater in an otherwise flat and featureless desert.  The floor of the crater used to be 150m below the normal ground  level, but now has filled with sand and is only 20m below ground level!

Wolfe Creek Crater

 Next back north to start our Gibb River Road journey and head west towards Broome.