Boodjamulla National Park (Lawn Hill)

We decided to leave the Robbiebago at the caravan park next to the Gregory Downs Pub ($8 pn) and also use this 3 night trip into Lawn Hill as a mini trial run for camping up in the Cape early in July.

The first bit of the road to Lawn Hill National Park is mostly bitumen or well graded dirt road that is maintained by a mining company near the park. We stopped at the intersection of the mining road turnoff as there is reception here for the mine and we had lunch whilst we check out our emails and phone messages since there is no phone reception and Gregory Downs nor at Lawn Hill.

After this intersection, the road quickly turns into deep rutted dirt tracks in many parts especially after the recent rains that would have made the roads a dickens of a drive. We had no real problems even though we also had to drive nice and steadily through a few large mud puddles that could have been dicey.

A tad muddy in places on the way in to Lawn Hill

Our friends were going to work for 4 months Adel’s Grove, so we decided to call into them first since it was on the way but we were advised that they had gone for a trek, so we continued onto our campsite. (By the way, Adel’s Grove is a private campground just outside the National Park - and expensive at about $48pn unpowered! Fuel is available here too for $1.98 per litre, but at least it gets you out of trouble if you were caught unprepared!)

We set up in a camping bay and then along came John & Kathy to see us after their walk and for a cuppa and chat.

Our site is home to nesting birds, unidentified by us at this point of time. It was great to sit back and watch them at times. We also saw black cockatoos and sulphur head cockatoos, kites, wrens and crimson .... whilst there. These little nest builders were so fast it was hard to catch them on camera. As you can see I have only 80% of the bird! The pick up an amazing amount of litter and fly it up into a gum tree for building the nest!

Unidentified bird collecting stuff for its nest

After our friends left, we went for a short but pleasant walk through tall palms and what not to the Cascades, only to discover a nice big pool of water with lots of little fish but no cascades as the water wasn’t flowing there at that time.

Both these above are of the pool area at the Cascades

The next day Bob did some fiddling jobs – there always seems to be something that could be done to make something work better or some minor repair. I am lucky to have a hubby who can do these sort of things that make life a tad better. Then we went kayaking with John & Kathy up the Lawn Hill River for a few hours. They came back to our camp and provided sausage sandwiches for a late lunch.

Kayaking up Lawn Hill Creek

On our last full day at Lawn Hill, we went on an ambitious 6 km walk (I reckon they have their distances way out and it is more likely 8km) to the Upper Gorge where we had a lovely view of the various levels of the river and gorge with its corresponding waterfalls. It was quite steep in places and that last kilometre seemingly took forever. I don’t have crook knees but they were sore for 2 days afterward.

One of the small waterfalls on the creek

The most disappointing thing about camping at Lawn Hill is that there are no hot showers. We could have brought in our solar showers had we known that it was cold water only. Nothing can compel me to have cold showers even in the middle of the day when it is the warmest! Finding out that no fires are allowed was also a tad disappointing especially as it wasn't a fire danger season.

Moonrise

Now we know a few more thing about camping and what to bring (and leave behind) when we go camping in the Cape.

All set up for a good night's sleep