Sandstone wilderness
The dramatic scenery of Queensland’s Carnarvon Gorge makes it a perfect spot for a multi-day hike.
Carnarvon Gorge is a sanctuary in time, an ecological refuge where all-but-vanished species still f lourish.
Located 300km inland from Rockhampton, it’s one of the Sunshine State’s most spectacular natural features, a 30km-long chasm slicing through rugged basaltcapped hills. White cliffs rise up 200m above Carnarvon Creek, a welcome oasis in the dry outback that rushes along carrying perch and platypus, and is a rich food source for sharp-eyed kingf ishers and kookaburras.
Carnarvon Gorge is also a place of enormous historic value. Venture into its many side gorges and you’ll f ind places of great spiritual signif icance to the local Bidjara and Karingbal people, with superb Aboriginal art sites displaying sophisticated stencil techniques.
Flora and fauna are the other shining stars of the gorge. Carnarvon fan palms are only found here, and Sydney blue gums, once widespread across the mainland but now mostly confined to New South Wales, prosper in its microclimate. Five glider species call this spot home and local nature guides guarantee sightings on night safari tours. The gorge is also full of echidnas, rufous bettongs, eastern grey kangaroos and pretty-faced and swamp wallabies, as well as freshwater turtles, f ish, snakes, goannas and more than 170 species of bird.
The Carnarvon Great Walk – an 87km loop that starts in the gorge, ascends to loop around the tablelands and drops back down to follow the green ribbon of the creek –is the ideal way to experience the countless sights Carnarvon Gorge has to offer.
DAY 1 Route: Carnarvon Gorge Visitor Area to Big Bend Walkers Camp Distance: 10km, plus detours
The river that carved the gorge isn’t hard to f ind. We cross Carnarvon Creek on stepping-stones soon after leaving the visitors centre. From the wide, sandy track we can look up at the tall, white cliffs of precipice sandstone. Springs emerge where the porous sandstone meets the impermeable base layer of moolayember rock.
Moss Garden is the first side gorge, and an opportunity to leave our packs behind a tree and walk light. Along the track Michelle Whitehouse of Australian Nature Guides points out elkhorn ferns, a tree-climbing orchid and a spectacular f ig wrapping its writhing roots around a rock. The Moss Garden is a dim and dripping wall of green next to a cool pool where, to keep the water pristine, no swimming is allowed.
The next detour from the main gorge is called the Amphitheatre. Traditional custodian Milton Lawton explains it’s a sacred place “of quiet contemplation, where our spirit men did their business” and urges visitors to remain respectful. To reach the spacious Amphitheatre with its ferny f loor, where cliffs open out 60m above, it’s a steep haul up ladders and through a narrow canyon where we see recently f ledged swallows.
Past rocky stairs, king orchids and pink rock orchids, we reach a waterfall, and beyond that Wards Canyon, which has the country’s most remote population of king ferns. It’s also home to cycads, which lend a tropical air to the lush canyon.
Next we reach the Art Gallery, a place of ritual and ceremony for Aboriginal people who passed this way. Here on a 62m-long sandstone wall are thousands of stencilled and engraved hands, boomerangs, animal tracks, female genitalia (which signal it was a place for women’s fertility rites) and nets, indicating it was also a burial place. The markings have been dated as far back as 3700 years. Cathedral Cave, the furthest stop from the entrance, is another sacred area rich in stencils and engravings. A few more river crossings (we cross it 22 times today but somehow I only get wet feet once) and we reach Big Bend campsite, our home for the night.
The 20-minute ascent verges on rock-climbing – I have to use my hands, hips and backside to hoist myself and my heavy pack up.
DAY 2 Route: Big Bend to Gadd’s Walkers Camp Distance: 14.8km
Day 2 is the big kahuna. The elevation graph on the topo map shows a near-vertical line, meaning we’re in for a long and very steep climb. After leaving Big Bend campsite, retracing our steps along the main gorge for a while then turning off to Boowinda Gorge, we walk 1km along the narrow, water-carved, boulder-strewn, moss- and fern-hung canyon.
We soon see an orange marker arrow off to the right and several cairns pointing the way out of the gorge, up a rocky ravine. The 20-minute ascent verges on rock-climbing – I have to use my hands, hips and backside to hoist myself and my heavy pack up the forbiddingly steep gully. It’s very sweaty work. And once we’re f inally at the top of Battleship Spur, the pain doesn’t stop. We’re still in for a tough 4km haul up rocky steps, across scree peaks and up more hills until we hit the plateau and can enjoy the view back along the gorge, cutting its way though the wooded tablelands.
From here the track eases, but we need to pay attention to the orange route markers nailed to trees – it’s easy to lose your way among the grassy plains and scattered eucalypts, cycads and ironbarks, even with red triangles behind us showing where we’ve come from. Many of the markers are burnt and colourless, requiring sharp eyes to spot, so this is no time to daydream. It’s slow going along a rock-tumbled creek bed and tough on the thighs after so many climbs.
The track notes suggest we’ll be walking for 6–7 hours, but we’ve been on our feet for seven and a half before we get to Gadd’s Walkers Camp, an old stockmen’s camp with a water shelter. This is a roofed shelter whose gutters funnel rainwater into underground tanks, from where it can be raised using hand-cranked pumps. The water is blessedly cool after the heat of the day.
It’s a lovely spot but we collapse exhausted into our tents by 6.30pm.
DAY 3 Route: Gadd’s to
West Branch Walkers Camp Distance: 15.8km
We set off along the management track that leads out of camp, which, cruelly, is uphill. It’s far gentler than yesterday’s heroic efforts, however, and after 6km, there’s a marker arrow and a wooden post to indicate we should leave
the management track and head into more open, grassy forests. This is the Mt Moffatt section of the park and we spot the sharp volcanic peak through the cycads. Thankfully, today’s route is f lat, except for a zigzagging descent across loose stones to Boot Creek. Here the track is a soft, sandy slog, but eventually we head over a suspension bridge and into West Branch Walkers Camp.
We pitch our tents in the car camping area, but the Walkers Camp section is a better choice – more secluded and sheltered by trees. The track notes said today’s hike would take 5–6 hours, but this time we only take five and a quarter, so we have time to relax and enjoy the pretty-faced wallabies and abundant birdlife. Rainbow lorikeets scream around us in gangs like aerial hoons, their jewel colours f lashing in the late afternoon sunlight, and kookaburras, currawongs, wattlebirds and paleheaded rosellas cluster around the water taps, ensuring not one precious drop is wasted.
DAY 4 Route: West Branch to Consuelo Camping Zone Distance: 17.3km
It’s an early start for the longest section of the walk, and once again the track is uphill – but it’s a breeze compared with Day 2. Who’d have thought we’d ever be grateful Rainbow lorikeets scream around us in gangs like aerial hoons, their jewel colours f lashing in the late afternoon sunlight. for that baptism of f ire? Soon we come to one of the highlights of the walk, the Mahogany Forest – a cool, tall, green stand of ancient cycads, silvertop stringybark and Sydney blue gum. We sit in dappled shade for half an hour in silence, listening to the birds. It’s a profoundly peaceful place, and we walk on refreshed.
Although we’re on the ‘Roof of Queensland’, one of the state’s highest spots at 1232m, this walk is short on topographical features to help us orient ourselves on the map, so when we cross a four-wheel-drive track and a signpost saying we’re 6.9km from Consuelo campsite, it’s a relief. A few hundred metres later we cross another 4WD track, and by now the forest has thinned out and the day has heated up. Bedevilled by f lies at my eyes and mouth, I need a break and go to sit on a fallen tree but notice ( just in time) an enraged bull ant menacingly snapping its jaws at me. I decide I don’t really need a rest, and leave the log to its venomous inhabitant.
We cross a 4WD track for the third time and another post informs us we’re 340m away from camp, a pretty, forested spot rich in Queensland blue gums, roughbarked apple trees and wildlife. After we pitch our tents, a family of emus comes to call on its new neighbours and we keep still and quiet to enjoy their company.
DAY 5
Route: Consuelo to Cabbage Tree Camping Zone
Distance: 13.8km
Today is an easy day – a short distance on the f lat – and we start in a leisurely fashion at the comparatively late time of 7.30am. Fortunately for us, the rangers have recently cleared and mown the path all the way to Cabbage Tree, making navigation through the grasslands a cinch.
We’re delighted when we come across a cluster of slender grass trees, their tall f lower spikes waving in the breeze, a primeval scene that represents the ancient, unchanging face of this magnificent country.
After three hours, we stop for a break among the cycads, then set off again – only to see within seconds the roof of the campsite’s water shelter through the trees. For the first time, we’ve beaten the time estimate (4–5 hours). Cabbage Tree is in a forest clearing ringed first by grass, then cycads, then tall eucalypts. It’s a beautiful place to spend our last, starry-skied night on the trail.
DAY 6
Route: Cabbage Tree to Carnarvon Gorge Visitor Area
Distance: 15.3km
I’m nervous about today. I don’t like descents and we have to head all the way back down into Carnarvon Gorge. But it’s navigation that turns out to be the biggest challenge. Amid wooded ridges, zigzagging downhills and deceptively well-trodden animal tracks, it’s frighteningly easy to lose the path and become disoriented. And it’s the opposite of a descent that poleaxes us: Demons Ridge lives up to its name, with a brutal uphill that leaves us gasping.
We come to an intersection with the Boolimba Bluff day-walk track and, just like that, our time alone in the wilderness is almost over. It’s only a 740m walk oneway to the lookout but we decide against it, needing to give our tired feet a rest. Instead we head for the rocky descent, 300m of steep steps and metal ladders. It’s a dramatic ravine that then rejoins the main trail through Carnarvon Gorge, and I relish our f inal hours in natural beauty before we arrive at the river crossing and the visitors centre at the mouth of the gorge.
It’s been a wonderful, wild and gruelling six days. Not all of this walk has spectacular scenery – it isn’t always easy to appreciate the subtle charms of the tablelands, with their endless grass and open forest. But, as a challenging wilderness experience bookended by dramatic and culturally signif icant gorges and punctuated by cool, delightful forests, it can’t be beaten.
TO WATCH a video of the Carnarvon Gorge Great Walk, head to australiangeographic.com.au/issue142
A family of emus comes to call on its new neighbours and we keep still and quiet.