The road into Umbrawarra Gorge was very bad with corrugations. I turned to Adrian and told him this better be worth it. The campground was small with lots of trees and fire pits. We pulled into an area in the corner with lots of room and started to set up camp. Adrian and I talked about staying more than one night, I know I had not wish to travel the road anytime soon.
Decision made he put the awning out and started to put the ground sheet out when he noticed some green tree ants had dropped near the van. He let me know in case I walked on them with out seeing them. Adrian hadn’t finished tying down the ground sheet when he opened the door to tell me we were moving. I stepped out of the van to see the ants had started to take over the outside of the van. I helped Adrian to drop the awning to see it was a sea of ants. The road out started to look good. We moved.
We took a walk up to the Umbrawarra Gorge. (Interesting side note: Umbrawarra Gorge is represented inside the National Aquarium in Baltimore.) It was a long walk and some rock hopping to get to the gorge. It was pretty but after what we had seen in Litchfield or the McDonald’s ranges I wasn’t overly impressed. After the long walk in I felt it fell short of writing home about. It must be different in the wet season. I walked into the water up to my ankles and went no further. It was cold, real cold. Adrian went in for a swim and agreed with me. It was a quick dip under to say he had taken a swim and he was out.
The next day the ranger came to clean the toilets. He asked Adrian how he liked the road in and before Adrian had the chance to say anything the ranger proudly told him the road is the best it has been in years. Adrian couldn’t wait to tell me. Really “the best it has been”? We had everything that was not nailed down go for a walk in the van when were drove in. Not to mention the dust in the van. I would hate to see how bad it was when it was bad.
In the afternoon on the second day one of our neighbors noticed some smoke rising on the other side of the trees. He let us know as he was going to walk up the hill to have a look. When he come down he told us there was nothing to worry about as it was too far away. The other people in the campground came together for a group talk about the fire. Just to be on the safe side we started to pack up the van to be ready to move out if needed. One of the other campers was staying in a camper trailer with 4 children. They told us it takes them around 2 hours to pack so they started the pack up as well. The children slept in the car and the parents slept outside in a small tent the boys slept in.
The smoke was still there the next morning and it looked like it was closer. Some of the men walked up to the hilltop to have a look. Yep it was closer. We all pulled out just to be on the safe side. We were planning to move on anyway so for us it was no hardship.
Roaming Russells 