Road trip to Carnarvon Gorge - CG
Oyster Moon
Paul Foskett & Rhu Nash
Tue 4 Dec 2012 05:31
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Carnarvon Gorge is in Carnarvon National Park
(surprise,surprise) but is one of the more accessible areas of the park.
In Queensland, this is one of the top three national parks to visit. It’s
about 750 km northwest of Brisbane and about a 10 hour drive if you did it
non-stop. The drive to the gorge was through cattle and crop (wheat I
think) country. Fields were absolutely huge. Most grain had already been
cut. At various point along the road you would come across thee huge grain
silo’s, and not just one, 6 – 10 of the things side by side.
 Talking of roads they are seriously straight here. When
the temperature rises you start getting that mirage water effect on the
roads. Make’s it difficult to tell if dip in road ahead or traffic coming
your way or stationary on the road. Really does strain the eyes. The
best way to see on coming traffic is having headlights on, which is what road
signs recommend.
 Another first for us was the road train. In this part of
Australia two trucks, or three small ones, is the maximum allowed on the
road. But,apparently, in remote Northern Territory can be a many as 5 or
6.
 We didn’t do the trip in one day but stayed off in a
town called Roma (big mistake). Mega expensive town as gas exploitation,
during the week all the good hotels are occupied by gas workers. We’d been
unable to get a room in anything other than Irish McGann's
Hotel formerly the Queens Arms Hotel. If you are ever in Roma, DON’T GO
HERE. We arrived late and knew we wouldn’t be able to stay anywhere else.
It cost us £75 for the night and there was no curtain on the window and when we
woke in the morning you would not believe the stains on the
sheets.   Nice curtain over the door!
 Apart from lack of accommodation, Roma is also famous for it’s
bottle trees. Well every town has to have something. There are over 100
bottle trees, and each tree commemorates a local soldier who lost his life in
the First World War.
 This is just a shot of typical landscape, but it really
doesn’t come across in a photograph. The landscape is endless, I love it,
huge openness, flat land and brilliant blue skies – like Norfolk on a good
day! Anyway the roads generally have well mown grass verge, few trees then
into huge grasslands or crop fields, dotted with trees. We talk about
deforestation of Amazon etc. but imagine the number of eucalypts that must have
been felled in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria for crops..
 If you imagine the trees in this picture going on for miles, I
guess this it was it would have all looked like originally:
 After our wonderful night in Roma we carried onto Carnarvon
gorge. We stayed in the Takarakka Bush Resort, which is about 40 km off
the main highway on unpaved roads. On the way to the resort passed the
remains of an aircraft that had gone down in 1943.
    The other thing we kept seeing on the trip was smoke.
This one was from a bush fire abut 20km from the resort.
 And our first camel....
 Carnarvon Gorge in the distance:
 and into the park....
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