Day 31 Tuesday 22nd July
Cobbold Gorge

Cobbold Gorge 'village', where we are staying, is on a private cattle station. The owners have opened it up to tourism because they have the beautiful Cobbold Creek and Gorge on their property. The gorge can only be accessed by a guided tour and we had booked on the 10am tour.
The night was cold, but dry, and we were up early. We had time to shower, do some laundry and have a cooked breakfast. We then had a coffee at the bar, before our tour began.
We were taken on 2 x 4WD buses across the very dry Robertson River to a purpose-built bus shed, (only opened two years ago), where we were split into three groups of about 14. Inside this shed there was a toilet for the use of visitors and also some information boards about the area and the story of Francis Cobbold, after whom the gorge is named.
The first part of our tour, with our great guide, Gemma, was a lovely walk through the savannah bush land, which included some history of the area, and information about bush tucker, bush medicine and the animals and plants of the area. I was particularly intrigued to find out that lace monitors, (large goannas), claw holes in the bottom of termite mounds, and lay their eggs in there. The neat and tidy termites quickly set about repairing the hole, and so the eggs are 'sealed in', provided with a lovely warm incubator, and a ready supply of food when they hatch! Then the babies claw their way back out....ingenious! Apparently the golden-shouldered parrot also uses termite mounds in a similar way.
We also learned a bit about the cattle station and how the area is suffering from two very poor wet seasons in a row, with consequently very little feed. However there is underground water which can be pumped to the village/resort and also into troughs for the cattle. When they want to muster the cattle they use what is called a 'water muster', and turn off the water supply to all outlying troughs, forcing the cattle to head for the water which is available in the dam near the mustering yards!
Part of the walk took us to an escarpment overlooking the gorge, and we then climbed down and headed for the small electric boats which would take us along Cobbold Creek and into the gorge itself. The mouth of the creek, with its permanent watering hole for cattle, had been a popular swimming and picnic spot for the previous and present owners of the property, but the narrows of the gorge were undiscovered until 1992 when some young friends of the then, also young, present owner, Simon Terry, came to visit and brought a small tinny and outboard motor with them. Of course they were amazed by their awesome discovery, and this sparked the desire in Simon to open the area to tourism.
Geologically Cobbold Gorge is very young, and that is why it is so very narrow. In places, the boat, which was no more than 2m wide, could only just fit between the sandstone rock walls. Yet again we saw crocodiles, although only the relatively harmless freshwater kind. The boat trip was very scenic and we were so pleased that we decided to visit this very special place.
On our return to camp some 3 hours later, we had lunch and then, since it was quite hot, we decided to have a swim in the sparkling infinity pool. The water was a little chilly, (it is normally heated at this time of the year, but the heater was broken!), but that meant we had the pool to ourselves, for a little while at least.....I think our presence there encouraged others! We enjoyed chatting to everyone and hearing all of their travel tales!
Later in the afternoon we took a really interesting, and quite challenging, 4WD track up to a place where we could see a 'quartz blow'. This is an area of quartz sticking out of the ground because the other rocks around have eroded away. The white quartz rock turned pink as the setting sun lit it up and we really enjoyed viewing this area. On the way there and back we passed lots of cattle and saw dozens of large kangaroos and wallabies.
We got back to camp just on dark, but since we had decided to have dinner in the restaurant tonight, that didn't matter.
All in all, it has been a great day.
Back on the road again tomorrow.