Day 12 Adels Grove, Lawn Hills National Park

It was really hot last night.  I woke at 10.30pm and it was still 30 degrees.  Where is Autumn April?  The fan helped us a little but I don’t love hot nights……

Philip and I woke around 5am and declared it too early for coffee so went back to sleep until 6am.  After talking with the gang last night we had our day already mapped out.  We would canoe/kayak both middle and upper gorges today at Lawn Hills.  So, after a leisurely breakfast we were on our way by 9am for the short drive to Lawn Hills National Park.  Philip and I left a little earlier as we had to unload and inflate our kayak.  It’s a fairly easy job but not such an easy job to carry it the 100 odd metres down to the waters edge, but we managed.  By this time the others had arrived with their hired canoes so we all set off at the same time.

It really is a beautiful place.  I said before how peaceful it is and even though there were a lot more people here today it still retained that peacefulness.  

We paddled leisurely, stopping to look at the various rock formations that make up the gorge.  Some of the huge rocks seem to balance precariously and Philip prefers to paddle mid-stream just in case one should fall.

Once we had reached the waterfalls at the top of the middle gorge we then had to all disembark our boats and drag them out of the water via a porterage system and walk a short distance to the upper gorge.  It’s actually a lot harder than it sounds.  Even though it is a relatively short distance we had to carry our inflatable kayak over an uneven rocky track while the others dragged their hard bodied canoes.  But as I said it is only a short distance so in no time at all we had our boats back in the water and once again paddling leisurely upstream.

The brochure said that we could go as far as the rapids which is a distance of 1.5km. The upper gorge is slightly different to the bottom.  The rock walls are not as high and there are a lot more pandanus palms along the waters edge.  It is also narrow in some parts.  One section in particular was very narrow and we had to push under a fallen pandanus palm to continue our way.

We could hear the rapids before we actually saw them.  Even though they are quite small in comparison to others it was still a very pretty sight.  Some other people had disembarked their canoes at this point and were enjoying the cool water.  We thought we would leave them to it and turned our boats around to start the return journey.

All up I think we paddled around 6km and our arms were feeling it by the time we arrived back at our starting point.  There was a bit of a line up at the ramp of people waiting to haul their canoes out and when I looked at my watch it was almost lunch.  

By this stage we were getting fairly used to hauling the boats in and out of the water and we seemed to be getting faster at it. 

We were back at our camp by 12.30 and after a quick bite I decided to have a nanny nap after my lack of sleep the previous night.  Philip kindly turned on the generator so I could have air-conditioning. It was bliss and I slept soundly.  A swim in the cool water late this afternoon was the perfect end to a perfect day.