No need to drive this morning, the Emma Gorge trail-head is a short walk from our glamping tent. The walk starts along a dirt track, which gradually gets rockier after a kilometre or so. Soon we are walking on river stones or rock-hopping over larger rocks. Compared to yesterday’s more adventurous scrambles, climbs and wades this is welcome-ly tame.
The reward at the end of the trail is a wide open pool with the tallest gorge walls we’ve yet encountered. The splashes of people in the water echo back to us as we approach (as do the squeals of people just entering the cool water!).
A waterfall in the back corner of the gorge sends a steady stream of cold water down into the pool below. Once we get into the pool there is a noticeably warmer side, and on closer inspection water is filtering through the rock and dripping into the pool. This water is much warmer than the river water, so we linger to that side.
It’s hard to describe the almost eerie feeling of the giant cliffs looming over us.
Once we’re too cold to stay in we return to camp.
[Click on a photo to open a full-screen slide show]
While we’re close enough, we are going to visit Wyndham – the northernmost town in the Kimberley. It’s a pretty short drive and we get there in time for lunch at the bakery (pies, obviously). They’re very good, can recommend a visit.
There’s a view from over the port from the Bastion Range (Wyndham is on the convergence of five rivers: the King, Pentecost, Durack, Forest and the Ord). If the looming cliffs this morning weren’t eerie, then this view certainly was! Something about the different colours of water from the rivers blending and the sense of looking out into infinity, or beyond the end of the world was very strange.
