Tuesday 12th June 2018
Well we have had an amazing day, compliments of Broady’s Adventure Tours.

We started out early at 7am and headed to the Zebedee Springs, these are thermal springs which are between 28-32°C. They were very warm. We arrived there and there were only 2 other cars in the carpark. Another arrived as we were walking from the carpark and the older couple did the “harry holt” past us as if they were running late for an appointment. It was just so they could get into the springs and find their swimming hole before us. It was quite funny to watch. We shared one of the pools with our neighbours from the campsite and had a pleasant chat for the next hour. At about 8am the first tour bus of 24 arrived and we stayed for a little while longer but it was getting very crowded so we left at about 8.30am. We then had brekky in the car park and then headed to El Questro Gorge. Before arriving at the gorge we had our deepest and longest creek crossing to negotiate. We watched a few cars go across that had snorkels fitted to their cars. They managed it OK but it came up to their bonnets, so we waited until we saw a car without a snorkel cross. Once they had made it across we gave it a go. We gave off quite a good bow wave and it came up to just below the bonnet. It would have bee about 100m and took us 51 seconds to get across. Well we made it over so time to enjoy the walk.

El Questro Gorge was beautiful, we walked through the Livistona Palm forest in the gorge, with sheer  very high cliffs. It was also quite a difficult rock clambering climb in some sections. We have got our rock hopping legs working quite well so was a great walk. We arrived at halfway pool where you have to walk through the pool and it comes to your chest so bags held on heads we made it to the other side where you placed the bags on the ledge and then climbed up. We were lucky their was a couple of tourists from London on the ledge so DB passed our bags to them. Then we climbed up over the very large boulder. This was the half way mark and had already taken us an hour. The next hour was even more difficult with some sheer rock climbing along the way. We finally made it to the waterfall at the end in Macmicking Pool. This was very beautiful. We had lunch here and a chat with the couple who had helped us at the boulder. They left and we then had the pool to ourselves for the next 10 mins when another couple we had met at the springs arrived. We chatted with them for a while then started the return journey. It always takes my legs a little while to warm up again after a swim but eventually they get going again. It was a really enjoyable morning/afternoon as it took us 4 hours to go the 7.4km return journey.

From here we headed to Moonshine Gorge which was supposed to be a relatively easy, 5km loop trail. We started this at 3pm and after 25mins had only gone 850m along an overgrown rocky trail. Given the time it had taken for the first almost KM we decided to turn around as we didn’t have our head torches and didn’t fancy doing the creek crossing in the dark. We never like not completing a walk once we start but erred on the side of safety today.

Our return creek crossing was interesting, at the half way mark the lights all came on the dash and DB thought we were going to stall. That would have meant a seized engine if the water got in, but it didn’t stall and we made it to the other side ok. Phew! The water actually came over the bonnet momentarily. That has been out longest deep crossing yet.

We then headed back to camp where we showered and headed to the bar for pizza for dinner with some live entertainment. Country Singer Catherine Britt. It was an enjoyable night.

Another big day out completed.