CG Day 2 - the amphitheatre
Oyster Moon
Paul Foskett & Rhu Nash
Thu 6 Dec 2012 06:11
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We’d been advised to get up early in the morning, when it was
much cooler, and do our walking then. No alarm clock was necessary as the
cockatoo’s make such a racket that difficult to sleep through. We got up
at 0500, not often I see that hour. We had to drive about 2.5 km to get to
the main park entrance to gorge and were there and on the trail by 0630.
The walking track crossed across Carnarvon creek many times – and in our case a
few more times as we missed the footpath in one section. Anyway we took in
the amphitheatre, the Art Gallery – lots more aboriginal art, Cathedral cave,
and Ward's Canyon on our first day, about 20 km. By the end of the day I
knew why my new walking boots were still so new. I have since gone out a
bought a pair of men’s boots that fit!
The Amphitheatre was about 4.3 km from the visitor
centre. You have to clamour, not really, climb, a series of steep tiered
ladders, then walk through a narrow gap in the gorge walls into a 60 m deep open
topped rock chamber. It’s been gouged out of sandstone by running
water. Originally the sandstone would have developed cracks, some of these
would have joined together becoming bigger and bigger as water percolated
through them eroding the sandstone. In this case, the sandstone is
underlain by impervious shale, so the water would have had to find an exit point
– the narrow passage we had to pass through to get into the cavern. Over
time more and more sandstone was eroded away, until now it is near the shale
base.
Pretty blue flowers
 The stairs to the cavern
  Through the passageway
   Into the chamber
       The sky above
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