Driving south from Emerald, we visit Carnarvon Gorge National Park. The day wasn't the best for hiking, with fairly steady rain in the afternoon, so we rest before going on a long 20km hike tomorrow.
Finally--as we drive out of Emerald, at the edge of mobile phone range, I'm able to finally get in touch with Takkarakka Bush Resort and reserve a cabin. The three times before, no one's answered the phone! We book a canvas cabin for two nights.
It's an uneventful three hour drive south to Takkarakka and Carnarvon Gorge National Park, with the only interesting point being the Virgin Rock near Springsure. Apparently someone in the 19th century saw an image of the Virgin Mary on the rock. Sounds very, well, ahem, uh, Mexican to me. Or should I say Catholic? I've always been amused by the stories of people seeing Virgin Mary in water stains on the sides of their hot water heater tanks, or in potato spuds. Then again, they have faith, where I don't.
Anyway, we drive into the park, and are surprised that the 40km drive from the highway is almost all paved--only the last 10km or so is unpaved. Apparently, it's going to be fully paved soon, and this is scary enough to Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service to shut their campground. They're afraid the campground's having too much impact on the surrounding area. But, surprise, they'll keep it open for Queensland school holidays, where no doubt it'll be packed to capacity every night. That just strikes me as silly--they'll maybe decrease impact by 25% or so, since it doesn't seem to be all that popular outside of school holidays. Tonight as I write this the Takkarakka Bush Resort's not even quite half full. Why not just keep the campground open all the time, and remove 25% of the campsites?
Anyway, we looked through the visitor center, and got some ideas for tomorrow's hike. We had considered doing a hike this afternoon, but it was sporadically raining, so we did the short nature walk, which was disappointing--while we saw stands of Macrozamia moorei (a cycad) and Livingstonia palms, with an occasional native hibiscus there weren't any interpretive signs at all. Grrrr. The walk was interesting though, as neither of us expected such a curious cycad/palm/eucalypt look to this place.
It was a good thing we didn't do a longer walk this afternoon--had we done a longer hike, we would've been drenched, as it really rained later in the afternoon. Hopefully tomorrow it'll 'fine up', as they say here. We'll take the rain jackets just in case.