Lawn Hill – Boodjamulla National Park

Here at last is our wrap up of three days spent exploring Boodjamulla (Lawn Hill) National Park at the end of June!!  After two nights at Gregory Downs we had a leisurely pack up and drove the short 90kms down the road to base ourselves in the campground at Adels Grove and spend the next few days seeing all there was to see at Lawn Hill.

The road out to Adels Grove was really great for the first 50kms or so, right up to the turnoff for the MMG Century Zinc mine.  After that, the last 40km’s were pretty rough going – lots of dust, corrugations and a much narrower road.  The Adels Grove Campground is 10km’s from the Lawn Hill National park itself but we are so glad we camped at Adels as opposed to the National Park campground – it was much shadier and nowhere near as dusty!  The only downside was that there was full phone/internet reception available at the National Park but nothing at all at Adels Grove!  I will do a separate post about Adels Grove next, this one will focus on what we got up to in the Lawn Hill National Park, there are just too many photos and to much to tell you to fit it all in one post.

The drive from Adels Grove to the Lawn Hill National Park car park takes only about 15 minutes, but again it is dusty and corrugated – our car UHF ariel finally snapped off along this stretch of road (it had been held together with a tree branch and duct tape for the last few months prior to this!).

Peter Prado at the entrance to Boodjamulla National Park

We decided on our first morning at Lawn Hill that the boys would go first to paddle up the gorge and check out the sights!  Jack paddled our little green kayak and Toby & Matt hired a canoe from the boat ramp area at the national park.  It is worth noting that canoe hire is available between the hours of 8am and midday and you must have cash to pay for the hire!  We didn’t have any cash on us so we had to purchase something from the shop at Adels Grove campground to obtain some cash out.  Canoe hire was $25 per hour and you have to pay $50 upfront ad then are refunded/pay more depending on how long you end up paddling for.  Also, there are not a large number of canoes for hire so try to get there as early as you can or you may end up waiting quite a while for a canoe to be returned and available!!

We arrived at the boat ramp at Lawn Hill at about 10am on our first day and ended up waiting about an hour for a canoe for Matt & Toby.  It meant they ended up paddling in the middle of the day which was not ideal, but still absolutely beautiful!!!

Matt & Toby getting into their hire canoe at the boat ramp

Off go the boys!

Yeah – the wait for the canoe was so worth it – pretty spectacular huh!!  The boys took their time paddling with a stop to see a freshwater crocodile on the bank (no saltwater crocs here – only freshies), a snack on the ramp at Indarri Falls, and then carried their canoes the short way up the bank to drop them in the upper gorge.  The boys paddled for a little way along the Upper Gorge. but both Jack and Toby started to tire, so they turned back without reaching what we think was supposed to be another set of waterfalls.  They arrived back about 2.5hours later, very tired, but happy!  Lexi, Kipp and I meanwhile, had spent the morning at the national park, camped out at the boat ramp under a shady tree, eating trail mix and making use of the internet reception while people watching all the tourists – it was a great morning!

Freshwater crocodile

The next day it was Lex and I’s turn to head out on the water.  Toby decided to come again too and paddled himself all the way up to the falls and back!  As I didn’t want to leave Kipp for too long, we had a fairly quick trip paddling up to Indarri Falls and back in just under an hour.  We had learnt our lesson from the day before and arrived at the boat ramp early in the morning to paddle and it was just beautiful!  It is really hard to describe how quiet and serene it is out on the water in the gorge and the colours are spectacular – I don’t think our photos do them justice!

Lex, Toby and I head out for our turn on the water.

While we were out paddling, Matt, Jack and Kipp decided to walk to the Duwadarri Lookout to see if they could get a photo of us paddling on the river.  Unfortunately they missed us as the walk turned out to be a very steep and very difficult 1km – not ideal carrying a baby and wearing thongs!  But they did get a couple of great photos for their efforts!

View from the Duwadarri Lookout

Lawn Hill Gorge

Jack at Duwadarri Lookout

After Matt and Jack’s tough walk they weren’t too keen to go for another but I convinced them that a swim at Indarri Falls was worth the moderate, 3.8km return walk, so off we went!

The last steep descent down into Indarri Falls.

Indarri Falls – we had paddled up here but not stopped and had a swim so the walk back for a swim was a must!

Fealy Kids – Indarri Falls, Lawn Hill National Park 2014

The water was beautiful – not too cold – just refreshing after a hot walk in!

We spent a good hour swimming and checking out the fish and waterfalls – wished we had of bought our snorkels with us!  There were heaps of other walks to do in the National Park but we had Kipp who was only 8weeks old for this trip so we weren’t keen to do anything too strenuous.  Lawn Hill gets very, very hot so all walks really need to be done in the early morning or late afternoon.  We headed back to Adels Grove at about 2pm on this day and treated ourselves to a well earned ice-cream each from the campground shop and a very late lunch of chicken snitzel sandwiches that the kids all agreed was the most delicious lunch they have ever had and is now requested frequently at home on weekends!  I forgot to tell you about the bread at Adels Grove – it gets delivered from a bakery in Camowheal (then frozen at the shop – I nabbed a few loaves straight off the delivery truck before it hit the freezer) and it is delicious – make sure you grab a loaf – white bread for a big treat – you won’t regret it!

So – yep – Lawn Hill was totally worth the long and rough drive out there!  Although we didn’t do everything there is to do – we missed the walk to the Aboriginal art shelters and the panoramic walk to view the Constance Ranges, but we felt we got to see the highlights in a three night stay with lots of relaxing in between.  Definitely add it to your list of places to visit!

Fealy Family – Boodjamulla (Lawn Hill) National Park 2014