13th August Bungle Bungle Campground 110 kms today 5,683 kms to date

We got up early and had breakfast with George, Catherine and Helen, who were heading for El Questro.  We planned to visit Cathedral Gorge about 30km away on the other side of the park.  This area shows the beehive rock formations Purnululu is famous for.

We started with a loop walk around some beehive mounds and into a small gorge with a plunge pool at the end.  This is a common formation when water cascades off the top of the rock down a chute and along a stream bed.  The walks are usually along the stream bed to the head of the gorge. 

There were many termite mounds and this one looked like a ghostly Victorian lady.

This sphinx-like rock formation was seen on the way to Cathedral Gorge.

Cathedral Gorge at Purnululu

Cathedral Gorge is hard to do justice to in a photo.  It is on a massive scale as you can see by the size of the people on the floor of the gorge.  It was much wider than Echidna Chasm and had a large pool of water at the end with an overhanging rock roof.  The water chute that directs the water into the gorge was also of very large proportions.  You could imagine the torrents of water that must cascade into and along this gorge during the wet season.
We walked  back out of Cathedral Gorge and took a short detour to Piccaninny Lookout. 

This is looking back from the lookout with the two intrepid travelers.  The track went along the bed of the Piccaninny River which is just a bare scoured surface and evidence of the power of the wet season water flows.

When we got back to our bikes there was a Honda Deauville parked there.  We had seen it before and met the rider a chap with a long flowing white beard and a black leather jacket.  He was riding his Matchless 350 single motorcycle to Darwin and it did a big end so he bought the Deauville.  It is a road touring bike and had road tyres, but yet the rider was able to negotiate the rough track into Purnululu creek crossings and all!  Made our efforts seem piss weak in comparison.  We spoke later to some 4WD drivers who told us he came barreling past them on the dirt road at a great speed and barely in control.

This photo shows the start of a very difficult return journey to the Hwy.  Firstly I forgot to zip up my top bag and my wash bag, camera and clothes fell out on the road and were retrieved by Alan and a passing motorist.  Then I stuffed up our carefully planned alternative route round the deep water crossing that caused Alan so much grief on the way in.  I rode through OK, but Alan’s GS wasn’t quite as agile and took a wider line which brought him onto mud in the river bed not firm sand!  The photo shows the GS sunk to its axles.  We hailed every passing car and asked if they had a winch, but to no avail, so I set off back to the Bungle Bungle Caravan Park to get help leaving Alan to curse his bad luck.

Alan tries to keep calm after his bike gets stuck in a mud hole

  

I stopped a 4WD coming into the NP,  Will and Michelle had a winch and were willing to help.  I turned my DR around to cross the creek again and promptly fell off a concrete weir wall into 4 ft of water with the DR on top of me.  Will jumped in to help push the DR back up onto the weir and up onto dry land,  but the bike had ingested a deal of water and needed to be dried out.  I had gone right under and was soaked to the skin.  The DR only went half underwater as it was lying on top of me and luckily the camera, mobile phone and other water sensitive bits of gear were on the dry side of the bag.
Will left me to deal with the DR and drove off to help Alan extract the GS from the mud.  He had decided that it had to come out backwards.  Will drove his 4WD to the top of the bank but the winch had jammed and he couldn’t pull out the cable.  Alan was getting desperate at this stage as leaving the GS in the mud all night could do irreparable damage. 

Then Will pulled out his “rescue bag” which contained rope, shackles, straps etc.  He had a 20m long strap which he attached to the winch and the back of the bike and simply reversed his 4WD and pulled the GS out of the mud.  Alan got back on the mud caked machine, started it up and rode across the creek and up the other side, much to his relief.
Meanwhile I had taken the tank off the DR and pulled out the spark plugs.  When I cranked the motor a jet of water came out the plug hole, meaning the engine had sucked in water and hydraulically locked and stalled.  It could have been badly damaged, but when cranking it on the starter motor it turned over freely.  I took the air filter apart and squeezed out the water.  I also dried the inside of the housing and the inlet of the carbie. The water stopped blowing out the plug hole when the motor was cranked so I put it all back together again and tried to start the engine, but it wouldn’t fire and eventually the battery was drained.
By this time Alan had arrived on the BMW and we decided that as it was getting late Colin should hitch a lift back to the Bungle Bungle Campground and come back the next day to try and drain more water out of the bike with a freshly charged battery.  All the while I was working on the bike, passing 4WD’s would stop to offer assistance and one called Paul said if I didn’t turn up after dark he would come back and pick me up.  As it was near sunset, the traffic on the road became quite light but Tony and Chris with their two children came to the rescue.  They were 1/3 way through a 6 month trip around Australia starting in Perth.  So I arrived back at the campsite just in time to have dinner and set up my battery on a charger Paul lent me.  People couldn’t have been more kind to us two hapless bikers.  But I still had to blag a lift back out to my stricken motorcycle the next day!!