Jason and Gwen Barnes' Honeymoon to Australia
Day 4

July 12, 2004

We hit the road again, headed for Warmun (Turkey Creek.) We saw another "mountain" by the side of the road. This one was rockier and steeper than the last, so I stayed below while Jason climbed and called his parents from the top.

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There was a lot of construction going on on this part of the road, as well as several one lane bridges, causing us to stop several times. We had lunch in Warmun. Jason had a crocodile burger. We agreed the meat was tough and stringy. I paid for lunch with my Sony Credit Card, which the store clerks just went crazy over! I wonder if they can get one here in Australia. During lunch the TV was showing a cricket game, and we were trying to figure out what was going on.

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The road in to Purnululu is 52 km of 4WD dirt road. It was long and bumpy, and Jason & I each drove halfway. There were also several water crossings.

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We went to the campground first and set up camp, and then proceeded directly to Echidna Chasm. To explain the setting of this chasm, Purnululu has this long bluff of red sandstone conglomerate that is beautiful, especially at sunset.

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Echidna Chasm is a rift in this huge bluff. We walked right up to the bluff. There are palm trees and leafy vines growning at the base of the bluff and wherever it could get a foothold on the side and top of the bluff. As we walked down the chasm, the tall, straight walls drew closer and closer together, and the light became progressively dimmer, although we could allways see sky at the top.

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When the walls got closer together than several meters, the vegitation in the chasm abruptly stopped. We kept going. Ahead, we saw that several meter sized boulders had crashed to the bottom of the chasm, and that several had fallen, but were wedged in the chasm above our heads, too big to drop any further. At this point the chasm width at the bottom was ranging from about one to three meters. WE clambered up a convienent two meter ladder and encountered the end of the chasm. It just ended smoothly rounded end.

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On the way back out we saw a bird nest made of twigs.

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We drove back to the overlook, but just missed the sunset. We brought the PB&J to the top, along with Jason's dad's tiny telescope and my dad's binocs. We ate food and applied bug spray as we waited for the sky to get dark. When it did -- WOW, what a show!

One of the most exciting was the Zodiacal Light. This means it was SO dark that we could see sunlight being scattered off of dust in our solar system. It looked like this:

Also, the Milky Way was huge and gorgeous. We also saw southern stars, something like this: