Tour Australia

We start week 6 in Lorella Springs Wilderness Park. Lorella Springs is a privately owned 1 million acre property in the Gulf of Carpentaria. They allow campers and day trippers onto their property at a small fee. The property has a lot on it including natural springs, natural hot springs, rock formations, aboriginal art, fishing, 4wding etc.

Today we’re heading out onto the property to see some of the rock formations, aboriginal art and to a couple of the springs for a swim. We firstly went up to Musterers cave which was a place where stockman used to take shelter during the wet season. It is not far from the campground with one river crossing and a lot of bull dust. From the outside it appears to be a small hole but once you enter inside it really opens up. It is home to some bats, insects and geckos. Following the track around further we then visited some of the aboriginal art in some smaller rock shelters. They were quite spectacular and exceeded our expectations.

 

We drove further and then went to a rock formation that they call “The Arch”. It was a short walk which took us up through a dry rock river bed then over a small hill to the arch. It was quite an amazing natural rock formation and is almost a bit suprising that it is even still standing. There are a couple of holes or windows through the rock either side of the arch which makes it look even more precarious.

We walked back to the Jeep and then took the hour or so drive up to Nanny’s Retreat. It is then a short 600m or so walk in to Nanny’s Retreat but it is a beautiful walk which has plenty of interesting rocks along the way including a small amount of aboriginal art. Once we were at Nanny’s Retreat we were blown away by how pristine the water was and how nice the area was. Down stream there is a nice little natural “spa” pool and upstream there is a small gorge/chasm which goes into another small pool. We spent a few hours swimming, looking around and having lunch. It was amazing!

On our drive back down south we decided to check out “Le Spa” and “Fern Gully Pools”. Le Spa was only a short 80m walk from where we parked but took us down to a nice little water hole. The water was fairly warm but not as clear as Nanny’s Retreat. We enjoyed cooling off before continuing down to Fern Gully Pools.

Fern Gully Pools was a 400m easy walk down to 2 water holes. The first was fairly shallow but warm and we didn’t swim in it. The second was a shaded pool with crystal clear water, quite a lot cooler and had ferns along the base of the cliff. It was a nice change and we enjoyed a swim there.

After cooling off we walked back to the Jeep and headed back to camp.

The next day we started off a bit slower. We wanted a more relaxing and chilled day. We went for a late morning swim at the hot spring adjacent to the campground and then got ourselves organised to head off for the day.

We first headed for Nudie Spring. We arrived a bit before lunch and had a nice long swim. It was the warmest water we had felt on Lorella Springs so far as it was a hot spring. We ate lunch, went for another dip and then headed for Monarch Rock.

There was a nice river crossing to do along the way and plenty of bull dust. When we arrived to Monarch Rock we weren’t actually sure which rock was Monarch Rock. We had a bit of a climb and a look around then left for the wetlands.

Upon arrival at the wetlands we were left a bit disappointed. There was no water and not much to see. We turned around and headed back for camp. We ended the day with another swim in the hot spring back at camp.