Lawn Hill Gorge - an oasis in the desert

Wow, what an amazing place!  After travelling about 300km from Mt Isa, mostly on dirt road, we arrived at this beautiful oasis.  We had booked into Lawn Hill National Park for 3 nights, with us at one end of the park and Carole and John in the 'tent' area at the other end.  Each campsite was located to give everyone a bit of privacy so we weren't all sitting on top of each other.  Near us was a boardwalk area where we could go down to the river for a swim in the crisp, cool water. 

There are several good walks in the national park, and we did most of them over the 3 days.  On our first full day there we walked to Indarri falls, which was a series of waterfalls into a lovely turquoise lagoon, surrounded  by palm trees and eucalypts.  There were plenty of fish just taunting us in the lagoon, as of course there is no fishing allowed in the national park.  We continued on for a walk up to the upper gorge, with spectacular views over the gorge, then back down through the falls and up a ''short' walk to Duwaddarri Lookout.  Well, that walk may have been short, but most of it was uphill over very slippery shale, then of course a difficult walk down the shale back to camp.  It was a good, if tiring, day with spectacular views.

Next day we walked to the cascades, which unfortunately wasn't actually cascading, then the walk up the Island Stack and 'Wild Dog Dreaming' which again was spectacular, with a variety of birdlife flying and diving into the river, and some lovely wildflowers.  We followed this with a 2-hour paddle in a 2-person canoe.  I was rapt - the bright red colours of the gorge we paddled through, brilliant blue skies, a turtle on the bank of the river (though we did miss seeing the freshwater crocodile that everyone else seemed to have seen!), the clear turquoise water, and bright sunshine - what a magic day.


We had not originally planned to go to Lawn Hill, but Carole & John told us it was worth the trip - and they were totally right.  The scenery was spectacular, the colours brilliant, the birdlife abundant, and the vegetation amazing.  All in all, it's been one of the highlights of my trip so far.  

The only problem we had with this place was the booking system:  you have to book through a central office in Brisbane (which is responsible for ALL national parks in Qld), and we were given two nights on one site, with a third on the site next to us because it was fully booked.  However, when we arrived the place was half empty  - we ended up staying all three nights on the one site, because the people who were supposed to arrive didn't, which was good for us.  But everyone we spoke to about the booking system agreed that it hadn't worked  very well for them, and some had had to stay at Adel's Grove just up the road for a night or two before coming into Lawn Hill because it was apparently full!  I think even an honour system would work a lot better than booking all national park sites through one system in Brisbane, when the people in Brisbane have no idea of what is actually happening in the parks.