Woke up to another beautiful morning on the Gibb- we’re usually awake 5:30 or 6 with the light, which is good as trying to stay on NSW time. Zebedee Springs first up on the menu today, on our way in we had an impromptu maths lesson calculating how old the beautiful Liviston Palms are- (you count the rings and divide by 4). We chanced our arrival just as a tour group of oldies left and most of the keen beans that get everywhere early, so were quite pleased with ourselves for fluking most of the springs to ourselves. Gorgeous warm water, not too hot and so crystal clear. The rock around here has a lot of pink in it as opposed to the orangey ochre sandstone of the West Kimberleys, made for a pretty floor of the springs. None of us wanted to get out but reluctantly gave up our good spots as more and more people came along. These springs are locked for private tours in the afternoon, so is a pretty busy spot we were lucky to get it almost to ourselves. We drove back to suss out the ‘deep water’ crossing to get to the El Questro gorge walk and were surprised to find a lot of cars parked who hadn’t made the crossing- lots of them like ours. We watched a few vehicles make the crossing and felt we could do it so went back to campsite to prepare for a big walk, 7km return over what sounded like some very challenging sections.
We made the crossing easily, water half way up our doors, scoffed at the pea hearts who hadn’t crossed and amazed (but not surprised) at the little Apollo Hire vehicles who had! About 2km creekside walking took us to the pool where most have a dip and turn around- as after that there was a big boulder to climb as well as carrying gear across the water to start the next leg of the walk. This was a 4 limbed scramble over large boulders taking us about 2 hours to make it to the smaller falls. Here we paused for lunch and to watch some backpackers navigate the waterfall (which was the path up) and decided it was going to be too hard to hang onto Stu on the narrow ledges. Stu and mummy hung out at the bottom waterfall which was pretty and waited for the others to have a swim in the top pool at the main falls. All reports were that it was beautiful but very cold as it receives no sun, the highlight being the little tree snake that expedited Lily’s brave brothers’ exit from the water. We were talking Stu up to make him feel better about not making it to the end just as a little 4yo barefooted monkey clambered up the waterfall, followed by his dad holding a sleeping baby in one arm....this crushed Stu as we had told him he wasn’t old enough. This gorge has been the only one that nearly broke us, it seemed a never-ending scramble back to the pool where we had another swim and watched the backpackers treat the walk as a boulder parkour session. I’m sure with no backpacks or children to carry we would have been equally as nimble....
I managed to leave hat and sunnies at this pool and only realised just as we were walking out to the car, so, popular as I was, I still decided to go back and find them. Tommy ran ahead with me and the couple with the baby had picked them up and walked them out for me which was greatly appreciated!
We’d booked a nice dinner at the campground’s restaurant, wound down over a nice steak and unusually quiet children and headed, exhausted to bed.