Bungle Bungles

Purnululu National Park in the eastern Kimberley is a wild, beautiful and largely inaccessible area. Known only to Aboriginals and a few pastoralists until the 1980s it has been World Heritage Listed since 2003.  The Bungle Bungle Range is the cente-piece of the park.  Formed 350 million years ago and now rising up to 200 m above the savannah grasslands is a spectacular display of vividly striped orange and black domes.

We left camp at 6.30 am in a large 26 seater four wheel drive bus for the 1.5 hour trip on the access road to the park.  53 km of very rough, corrugated station road (track) took us to the park headquarters.  Then another 40 mins to travel 26 km to the southern walks in the park. The Domes walk and the Cathedral Gorge walk were spectacular and well worth the nearly three hours of bone-shattering travel to get there.  

The huge rocky domed-topped, banded structures are grey and orange sandstone structures where the natural iron coloured sandstone layers alternate with layers coloured by cynobacteria  stained grey layers.

I am finding it difficult to find the right words to describe this extraordinary geological feature so will let the photos try to do justice to it.

After a two hour walk we lunched and drove another hour to the northern part of the park where we treked into  Echinda Chasm.  An ever more narrowing gap in the towering rock gave a spooky feeling as we squeezed between the walls.

Got back 11 hours after we set off pretty exhausted and ready for a shower and a meal in the camp marquee.