We arose early on a chilly morning. Cheryl had found it very cold over night. We had a slow start, warming up and finishing reading the Perth weekend newspapers in the early morning sunlight. These were to be our last newspapers for 5 days. We then drove thirty-five kilometres to the trailhead for our first walk in the Purnululu National Park, a walk up the dry bed of Picaninny Creek as far as Picaninny Gorge. We began walking at around 9am, and discovered that such a late start meant that most of the walk would be in the heat of the day. On the following days we started much earlier. The air was hot, dry and still. The four litres of water we carried was only just enough for the day.
Most of the walk was along the winding creek bed, over fluted grey bedrock, cut by holes caused by large tumbling rocks. The characteristic egg-shaped, striped Bungle Bungle mountains lined both sides of the creek. The mountains are formed from white limestone, the black stripes caused by algae and the orange stripes forming a thin hard crust over the interior white stone. Some of the mountains were large imposing single "eggs", while others looked like families of "baby bungles". In some places the grey bedrock gave way to river pebbles and sand, and then progress was very slow. Several hikers returning from an overnight stay further up the gorge claimed that the official estimate of seven kilometres to the beginning of the Picanniny Gorge was a huge under-estimate. By the time we reached the start of the gorge, at a place called the Elbow, it was almost too hot to keep going. However we continued one kilometre further to get a feel for how the gorge narrowed. After a lunch break we began the long walk out. The return journey was much more pleasant as the Bungles cast long shadows for much of the way. Back at the campsite we drank lots of water, ate dinner under the Milky Way, and then, exhausted, we fell asleep early.
