This was a relatively restful day. We walked to the Reception at the Eco Resort where we plugged in various electric devices for recharging. Only $A5 per item!!! And discovered that you could purchase internet time at $A5 per half hour. We thought that might be useful later. Then we continued to Joffre Gorge and walked as far as we could downstream, which was not very far. There we met a young lady who was enjoying her day off from working at the Eco Resort. She told us that what we could see before us was the “Olympic Swimming Pool”, it was 300m long and very cold. And you could only get out at the far end with an expert climber – rather like the far end of Hancock Gorge yesterday. apparently when it gets warmer the best way of getting along the pool is to “tube it” – get an inner tube from a tyre, sit in it and paddle along. Also have a smaller tube to carry the beers.
Looking downstream in Joffre Gorge.
The map below shows how Joffre Gorge leads down to Red Gorge and where we were yesterday. Here we were about 4 km from our exploits of yesterday.
So turning round we headed upstream. the sun behind us made the rocks glow.
Going upstream, Joffre Gorge. Blue skies, red rocks.
We came to a narrow section where we had to splash through the stream but saw that it widened out beyond.
The wide area was almost circular with vertical walls and with a large pool in the bottom. This was where the Joffre Falls entered Joffre Gorge.
The Joffre Falls. I suspect they are magnificent in the Wet. They are pretty good in the Dry.
The combination of warm sunshine and fairly clean water led to the inevitable – Chris went for a swim!
Chris resting after a swim at Joffre Falls.
After a respectable time at the pool we headed back to reception, picked up our charged items and made a booking for dinner in the resort restaurant. We rested then went back to reception to catch up with emails and other necessities of modern life – mainly moving money to keep up with our spending! Our meal was pretty good – sophistication in the bush.
The application below shows you various .kmz files. If you open them with Google Earth you will get our route and the photographs I took, at the spot I took them, displayed in all their glory! Download the file you want, store it somewhere on your computer, open Google Earth and open the file.
If you don’t have Google Earth you can get it HERE.
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