Stopped at Roma to pick up a couple of things we’d forgotten – cutting boards, washing powder! This is a shake down trip for Arty, so not surprising we forgot something. Then on through Injune to the Carnarvon Gorge turnoff. We’d been told by friends that Roma had changed from the quiet country town they used to live in to a mining town, and they were right. Big trucks and white 4WD’s with red flags on poles everywhere. The airport had hundreds of these 4WD’s in the car park for the fly-in fly-out’s I guess. On the road between Roma and Injune the number of trucks was amazing, with maybe 1 in 3 of them being 2 or 3 trailer Road Trains. Lots of road work going on too, so a slow trip.
Stopped at Injune for morning tea. Nice park but couldn’t really drive off the road into it. Visitors information centre was well stocked and friendly helpful staff.
Steve’s big complaint of the trip so far is the Driver Reviver stops. Big signs up for a few km before Miles, just to get there and it was closed, and the same at Injune, only we couldn’t even find where that one was supposed to be.
Saw an emu and camels and, of course, kangaroos along the way.

Arrived at Carnarvon Gorge about 1pm. The road in off the highway is about 45K, with 25K of that on dirt roads which were in pretty good nick. This road is often closed when it rains as you ford the Carnarvon Creek a couple of times. We met our friends Trish and Bryan at the campground where they were already 3/4 setup with a big tent with big tarp cover in the shade of which many a tale was told and vino consumed over the next 4 days. We did the full setup of Arty, including the downstairs annex. This will be the first real trial of the drawer and fridge setup too. In the afternoon we did the Nature Trail walk, just a few K along the creek beside the campsite.
The campground here in the National Park is only open during the Easter and Spring school holidays. The rest of the time you have to camp at Takarakka which is a private campsite about 4-5 K out of the park. We’ve timed our visit to stay here on the last Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday (Labor Day) of the holidays before it closes on the Tuesday. I could see on the website when booking it that campers were leaving from the Friday with the site just about empty by Monday – suits us perfectly.
The temperature today was in the high 20s with an overnight fall to about 10 – very pleasant!