LAWN HILL NATIONAL PARK

A young couple we met over in W.A. 2 years ago told us that Lawn Hill National Park is the most beautiful place they've ever seen. Gee, that's a big call to make. A few other people have also told us it's beautiful. Well, we're now there & we agree; it's beautiful but we wouldn't say the MOST beautiful . I don't think either of us can actually point at any one place we've seen & say that it's the MOST beautiful. But, in saying that, it's definitely one place we're glad we came to & one we'd recommend to others.

Before we left Bourketown we went for a drive up to the river (the Albert) which is the only means of getting to the gulf from there so you'd need a boat. (No, we weren't about to jump into a crocodile infested river in our little blow-up). 
I liked this sign near the boat ramp; couldn't resist it! There's not a lot to see in Bourketown so after a quick drive around we headed back down the 'track' to Gregory Downs where you turn towards Lawn Hill. It's probably the worst road we've been on yet. As you can imagine it gets pretty wet up there & when the dirt roads are driven on when they're wet, they become very rutted. Bits of the Savannah Way had been graded but not all & definitely not the road up to Bourketown.

Lawn Hill is beautiful in parts & ugly in others. During the wet the creek is flooded & now, in the dry there are the remnants of the floods; huge piles of dead palm leaves & trees that have been knocked over & many others with no soil left around them & are only holding on by their roots. You could almost make a horror movie in one part of the lower gorge; it's kind of eerie. It's full of tufa formations which are a form of limestone & apparently very significant in geology but they're really ugly! It's something to do with the fact that it's all spring fed.

Then there are the other parts; the middle gorge is beautiful. The only way to get all the way up the creek is to paddle so that's what we did. You paddle up the first part of the gorge to the Indarri Falls which are also made up of tufa but they're beautiful. There are about four drops. You can swim there but it was way too cold today; the sun had a bit of a problem coming out. (We've left the beautiful weather back in the Northern Territory.) When you get to the falls, you have to carry your canoe to the top gorge & you can then row up to a part where there must be springs all over the place; there's water coming from every direction & it's pretty warm but I still only had a paddle.

This afternoon we did a couple of the walks. One was to a sacred Aboriginal site and then we went on to the lower gorge. Then we went for a walk to the lookout over the falls & then on to the walk around the cliffs overlooking the middle gorge. The views are beautiful. 

We were booked in here for another night but it's really not necessary; we've seen all there is to see & there's supposed to be rain coming.

I was in the front of the canoe today & wanted to get a photo of Phill rowing & of us together in the boat so I took a couple over my back & then a few self portraits. What do you think?????