Carnarvon Gorge National Park

We have spent the past three days camping at Sandstone Park. It's a new camping site located approximately 6 km from the Carnarvon Gorge Visitor Centre, at the beginning of the gorge walking tracks. There are 41 very large sites offering 360-degree views of the surrounding countryside.
 
There are no powered sites available here; the only facilities include portaloos scattered throughout the site, a dump point, and fire pits located at each site. They have also removed the unnecessary rule of retaining greywater, allowing it to flow onto the ground where it is badly needed. Daily fees are currently $23 per site.

This new tourist venture is located on Bandana Station, which covers 43,000 acres and borders the national park. The station is now organic and typically has about 2200 cattle.
 
This is our third visit to Carnarvon Gorge, with our last trip in August 1997. At that time, camping was permitted throughout the year in the national park, but it has now been restricted to school holiday periods.
 
On our second day, we walked as far as Cathedral Gorge, which involved crossing Carnarvon Creek a total of forty times.

 

The return distance to the visitor centre is 18.2 kilometres. Of course, there are many interesting sites that branch off the main track, which increases this distance by quite a few more kilometres.

Some of the side trips include sites like Wards Canyon, which is a very steep climb that really gets the blood flowing with its hundred-odd steps, ultimately leading into a side gorge that shelters the world's largest fern, the king fern.

Then there is the Moss Garden, where water constantly drips from the sandstone to support the mosses and ferns that thrive here.

The amphitheatre is a 60-metre-high chamber carved out by running water over thousands of years.

On our final day, we paid what we believed was a very reasonable $165 for three of us to enjoy a twenty-minute flight over 'Bandana Station' and Molleyamber Gorge.