Thursday 17th May, 2018
Well what a difference a day makes. We both had the most amazing sleep last night, the peace and quiet in the National Park, except for a few dingoes howling in the night, was very conducive to heavenly sleep. Yay!!

We decided to head to the Chichester side of the park and do a walk and ride. So we headed off on the 48km dirt road drive to Mount Herbert. The drive was very scenic and very different from what we have been looking at lately. The Spinifex plains with dark red rocks was very pretty.

We arrived at Mount Herbert and decided we would do the short walk to the summit first. In doing so, we realised we our muscles were still a little tired from our Mt Bruce walk 2 days ago. The view at the top was quite spectacular. Unfortunately, the photos really don’t do today justice. We then had the task of taking the bikes off and cleaning off some of the red dust, as we were leaving the bikes here for our return journey. This was a lengthy task as the bikes had been on the car for ages, they were glued up with red dust and quite squeaky.

We then drove to the start of the hike at Python Pool, a stunning spot for a swim in a cool refreshing rock pool whilst enjoying the spectacular backdrop of the imposing rugged ochre cliffs. We walked to the pool for a look then decided on an early lunch before our walk.

We were walking The Camel Trail today which starts at Python Pool and is an eight kilometres, three hour (one way) moderate walk which follows part of the old camel road. The trail winds up at the rugged sandstone escarpment of the Chichester Range, through rolling Spinifex covered hills and large termite mounds. It was very picturesque. It took us about 2.5 hours. On arrival back at Mt Herbert carpark we hopped on our squeaky bikes and rode back the 6km via the road to the Python Pool. The ride was picturesque around every corner, it was a pleasant roll down the hill except for two uphill sections. The scenery was amazing.

We then headed to the Python Pool for a well earned swim. Another beautiful swimming spot and very refreshing after our long adventure.

Then it was decision time, on to Karratha (apparently a 3 hr drive) or back to last nights camp at Miliyanha (50mins). We don’t like heading backwards but the timing and lure of peace and quiet in the National Park for one more night won this time. We so prefer the National Park to the caravan parks and as we will be in them for a while we took the opportunity of one more quiet night and ran with it.