A Dangerous Business

Date: 1st September 2023

Start: Carnarvon Visitors Centre

End: Gadd’s Walkers Camp

Distance Walked: 24.8 km

Current Song Stuck in Head: Like An Angel Passing Through My Room by ABBA

Heart Status: missing in action

It was hard getting out of bed this morning. I liked the comfort of my bed and the warmth of my quilt and really didn’t want to give it up in a hurry. I also enjoyed doing the simple 2 hour hike I did yesterday to Moss Garden. It was easy. A pair of good shoes on my feet, nothing on my back dragging me down, and getting to see some amazing scenery. My parents and their friends seemed pretty eager to do this, maybe I should join them. Why would I want to give that up by chucking a large backpack laden with stuff on my back and walking for close to 25 km whilst climbing 600 m? To tell you the truth, I don’t really have an answer for that yet. But I’m out here now, and there’s no turning back.

Once I did crawl out of bed and downed a cup of coffee and a bit of muesli, I got a lift to the visitors centre with my dad around 7:30, with these wallabies bidding me a fond farewell.

There was no fanfare as I set off, I just did. The first 3 km went by in a flash, darting past the Moss Garden turnoff (notwithstanding the quick shedding of my jumper and thermals at the loo) and zooming to the Amphitheatre. What I was met with was simply stunning. An oasis covered on all sides by towering cliffs of sandstone, a thin glimmer of light shining directly overhead. Simply magical.

Sadly with all these side tracks, I couldn’t stay for too long. I knew today’s walk would be the longest I would do, so dawdling was out of the question. Ward’s Canyon was next and although not as awe-inspiring as the Amphitheatre, it’s still worth visiting if you’re planning to visit this exquisite national park.

Then I moved onto a more culturally significant site: the Art Gallery. A cliff wall covered in millennia-old Indigenous art, depicting the meetings and ceremonies they held there. It was the first time I had seen this sort of art outside of a museum. It’s amazing that it’s still here after all these years.

Past Art Gallery, the track turns from a grade 3 to a grade 4 track. It’s a bit less defined, but still very doable for a semi-fit day hiker. This was also the first use of the eponymous orange triangle track marker. I’ll be getting very familiar with them over the coming days.

Cathedral Cave towards the end of the gorge is very similar to Art Gallery… only bigger. What was interesting to me was the time scale that these paintings had been made over. The earliest date back over 3000 years, but there’s also art depicting muskets, stemming from their meetings with European settlers presumably in the 1800s.

500 m on from this was Big Bend, the first campsite on this trail. Now, if I was smart, this would’ve been where I spent my first night.

The key word in that sentence is if.

Instead, I made the decision over a month ago to skip Big Bend and go straight to Gadd’s in one day. I saw someone on YouTube do it, so why couldn’t I? How hard can it be (narrator: it was in fact very hard)

For the first km, the trail to Gadd’s goes up Boowinda Gorge. Remember when I was complaining about all the sand yesterday? Well, I now had to walk across a rocky creek bed.

Then I saw some track markers… pointing directly up…

Thus began 3 hours of abject misery. This climb (and this bit in particular) was the worst I have ever done. It was rough, steep, and completely exposed to the elements. At points, I felt light-headed and nauseous, and those questions I had about why I’m doing this instead of the nice, easy day walks my parents were doing came flooding back.

3 hours to do 3.6 km… My cadence became: walk 20 m, stop and catch breath for 2 minutes, and repeat ad infinitum. Once I did reach the top, I honestly couldn’t enjoy the view that much because I was still recovering from the hell that I had just put myself through.

The good news is that I only had 10.1 km to go over mostly flat ground. Sweet, sweet flat ground.

I entered a section of quintessentially Australian bushland. Long grass as far as the eye can see, gum trees dotting the landscape, and countless roos and wallabies jumping out of harm’s way. It was fairly monotonous walking, with nothing especially interesting happening apart from my very first sighting of an echidna in the wild!

The last couple of k’s were a bit of a chore. I’d come so far, the only thing I cared about was reaching camp. It’s not the greatest mindset to be in while hiking, but I couldn’t care. I was sick of lugging my pack around all day, all I wanted to do was take it off, cook dinner, and go to sleep. I did so right on 5pm.

With not much daylight left, I had to set up my tent in a bit of a hurry in the hopes I could get my cooking done before sunset. I couldn’t, but it wasn’t all that bad using my headlamp. Once all was said in done, I was in bed by 8pm (unheard of from me), dozing off to a podcast on the history of the Ottoman Empire.