Purnululu National Park, WA.

 On leave Derby we started heading further East - we weren't exactly sure where we were going to stay for  our first stop over but ended up driving for about 5 hours and stopped at Mary Pool campground on the Mary River. It was a very popular campground but thankfully it was very big and spread out we actually ended up camping away from the main section of the camp, and up near a dry creek bed with the cows!! They didn't mind sharing too much.


We camped next to a lovely lady who came over to say hello and gave the kids some old glow sticks and books that she had. The kids loved this and we now have quite the variety of books to read again.

The next day, we didn't far to go because we drove so far the day before. We had planned to stay at the Spring Creek campground and it is again a busy camp, so we got there nice and early to get a spot. We lucked out and got a spot right on the creek this time. The creek has a small amount of water in it but it wasn't flowing. We met some lovely neighbours again here, a semi-retired couple from Perth and a family from Forbes, NSW. The family had 2 kids and Zara and Elsie were beside themselves to have more kids to play with. Hunter and Lila are traveling the opposite direction to us so have already been through the NT and experienced cane toads so they taught the kids how to find and kill cane toads. On our first night they caught 11 toads by pulling them out from under the rocks with sticks. 


Zara and Elsie showed their shell collection and with Hunter and Lila's help, they made shell necklaces. One of the other young boys in the camp had his fishing rod and yabby net and the kids managed to catch with little fish in the nets and then catch a slightly bigger fish with the rod. This created great excitement amongst all the kids. They also spent time just exploring the creek and just having good solid fun and getting nice and dirty.


We were all up early the next morning to tackle the Purnululu National Park and The Bungle Bungles. We had heard terrible stories about it being very rocky and taking hours to drive 50kms, so Saul ended up ringing the visitor centre the day before and asking what the road was like - the lady explained to Saul that is it more of a 4WD track than a road, complete with multiple water crossings. So with that knowledge we knew not to rush the drive and see it as part of the adventure - and the kids go so exicted every time we went over a water crossing.


Because the tracks took so long to drive along, we only did the southern end of the national parks, this is the end with the iconic beehive-shaped rocks of the Bungle Bungles.


We did the Cathedral Gorge walk and Bridie walked most of this one on her own, including the stairs and some difficult rocky paths. She did very well. 


Then we walked some of the creek track to the lookout. This was well worth the walk.


On returning to our camp at the end of the day, we noticed the campground had become super busy and there were people camping basically where ever they could fit their vehicle, even if it was right next to somebody else. We had a person park their van right next to ours beside the creek, and our neighbours on the other side, the semi-retired couple we meet, had some people park their car in our neighbours parking spot next to the caravan and put up their roof top tent. Our neighbour said that she could step out straight from her caravan onto the ladder up to the rood top tent. Things are busy on the road at the moment, but there comes a point where you have to remember common curtosy. Saul had words with the old bloke next to us, so they knew we were not happy about the invasion of space. There was another free camp just 7kms down the road and a caravan park less than 5km away, so there was no excuse to need to camp that close.


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