Day 35-37 Lawn Hill National Park- 13-15 July 2009

6642kms, 28 degrees C

We are in the bush now – red dirt roads with cattle! And water crossings!!

Lawn Hill was a first for many things – fossils, gorges, aboriginal rock art and crocs. Our first stop was the world heritage listed Riverleigh Fossil Site. Excellent viewing of bits of old roos, crocs, birds etc. Lawn Hill is a wonderful National Park – anyone reading this thinking of doing a similar trip must pop into Lawn Hill. We saw our first red rock gorges – the stuff of the Croc Dundee films (though they were filmed in Kakadu, known as kaka-don’t in some circle but we will report on that when we get there in a few weeks time. We will see gorges over 3 states from Qld, the NT and into the Kimberley in WA over the next two months.

One of the walks at Lawn Hill took us past some aboriginal rock art dated over 10,000 years old. A mere 5000 years before the first Egyptians started strutting their stuff.

The gorges were gorgeous for swimming and canoeing. Those worried about us getting on is such a confined space were justified – the canoe had two skippers and it is almost all went horribly wrong. But we staying upright and married.

We saw our first budgies in Australia – that might sound a bit odd but you don’t get budgies in the wild around the coast and 90-odd percent of Auzzies live on the coast. You are more likely to see them in a cage in Guildford. But they were spectacular in the wild. And our first croc of the tour was not enough to get the heart racing – it was only 300mm long!