Sunday the 12th of August.
My second night in Dales Campground and half of the camp hosts assurances have come to pass. A dingo has stolen my dinner. Two nights worth actually. A delicious beef ravioli (not baby spinich that just made for a better title) That was the first assurance, that we would see dingos day or night and that they would take anthing that they could carry. The other assurace was that we would see snakes but that hasn't come to be yet. Now mind you I walk like Fankenstein's Monster in the bush so that I don't surprise one. My only real fear is that It'll develop into a habit and once I return home that I'll be one of those people that stomps around a room having lost the light and nimble stride of a cat burgler that I've been perfecting over decades.
But about that Dingo. I spent the day down in the Gorge, amongst the scerene pools and canyon walks, only to find out from my G.N. Friends of the moment, Don and Marg that it had been a 'bit blowy' up top. Sure enugh I retourned to my camp to see the wind had yanked my ten around about 20 degrees, tearing a hole in the corner where I'd been keeping my food. I quickly set about taking the tent down to do the necessary stitiching in the fading daylight. And well to be honest I don't know if the little bastard got my rav while I was mending the tent or if he got'em while the tent was torn. I guess the later, I didn't notice they were gone untill I allread had the water boiled! Top Ramen to the rescue.
So I'll have to leave the park and re-supply in Tom Price tomorrow. A good excuse to buy a couple of cold beers though. That'll do a treat.
As far as the park is concerned. It's magnificent. The most subtly undulating country is covered in stout and prickly grey white spinfex grasses and occasional termite mounds standing as tall as a man and just as wide as at the base. They stand together with solitary Mulga and Eucalypts trees sporadically spaced along broad valley floors. More often then not they seem to then spread themselves more symetrically along the peaks of the Hamersley Range. The mountains, no more than 1100 meters or so high, arch quite gently into a rich blue sky as subtle red and green curves like waves along the horizon. Running West to East the range is cut down by tributaries of the Fortescue river. The water finds it's ways through soft vulnerable rock formations creating permenant waterfalls and pools in narrow box and slot canyons. The pools are sacred places to the locals, playing importat parts in their creation stories. Appreciating their cool and quite granduer comes quite easily having ventured down treacherous canyon walls from a hot and dry land above.
The water isn't quite crystal clear as it supports quite a bit of lfe in the form of small fish, frogs and lizards. Moss grows thick on shallow rocks and beneath the waterfalls which run warm carrying the heat of the earth above to a frigid pool below that steals the air from your lungs as you slip back to the surface of the water after a shallow dive from the rocks along the edge. You can quite happliy sun ... ( you might be intrested to know I can hear that damn dirty dingo trotting between the tents at the moment. ) ... Yourself on the rocks at the water's edge all day but it's good to go for a wander down the canyon and see the rock formations. BIF, banded Iron Formation. Is alternating Red and Grey rock layed down and compressed over eons,in this case from time when there was very little oxygen in the planet. Remember our friend the stromatolite from Shark Bay! His olds would have been responible for these bands which alternate between times where sediments were oxygen rich and oxygen poor.
posted by Dusty Calfee @ 10:34 PM
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