Mornington

Tuesday 5^th – Thursday 7^th July

We had heard that to ensure a campsite at Mornington, you needed to be at the phone check-in point by 7- 7.30 am – no bookings. We left early and had breakfast after getting the ok to enter, but in fact there was no real hurry  as the campground did not actually fill up very early each day. The campground is really spacious and bushy enough to make it really private, which was great, and there are hot (sometimes) showers, toilets and lots of water.

The GRR (Gibb River Rd) is in very good condition which made it much easier travelling than we expected, and the road in to Mornington had just been graded so that was easy, too.

Along the road in,

 which is about 80+ km, we stopped at a little creek crossing and saw lots of great birds,

eg Red-wing Parrots, Spinifex Pigeons,

 Long tailed Finches, Black-tailed Treecreeper and later we saw Red-backed Wrens.

In Mornington itself, there were really good birds – eg the Purple – crowned Fairy Wren, several Bustards at close range (one actually flew high over Rob S in his swag one morning!), Crimson Finches. Diamond Doves are in huge numbers a

nd we had a close view of a Jabiru just along a little creek that we crossed.

The surrounding ranges were absolutely stunning.

There were two gorges, each beautiful in its own way, where we could swim,

Sir John Gorge

 

and swimming water-holes as well.

Bluebush Waterhole -  all to ourselves

.
Dimond Gorge

.all on the Fitzroy River, and often not another soul there!

When the Fitzroy River is in flood, it peaks at 53m! ... it flows over the top of the escarpments. The flow of water would fill Sydney Harbour in 21 hours!

Some flowers - a white hibiscus

and lots of pink and yellow Grevilleas

Slver leaf Grevilleas

and the red Rosella plants

One of the walks gave information about termite mounds

A wonderful 3 days.