Carnarvon Gorge - Emerald

Another day, another pack up. It's a relatively quick process at least, minus the bat shit all over everything the last 2 nights, which Ben has cleaned up before folding the tent down. I was conveniently still in bed both mornings when he was climbing on the car cleaning it off. Hopefully no more bat clean ups from now on. We wandered down to the creek to try our luck once last time to see the platypus, no luck today. The bar man did say on Wednesday that often people will stay for a week and not see one, so we've been very lucky. On the road to Emerald, we had a quick stop at Rolleston and Springsure. We arrived at the Emerald visitor info centre and big easel, took our photos, collected brochures and decided on an impromptu visit to the gemfields. We made ham and cheese wraps on the side of the road, before heading towards Sapphire and Rubyvale. Emerald is the first stop where we've realised another night would have been good since there was more to do than we realised. All good though, we'll be back again one day. We've also had our first 30 degree day, weird but good. We cruised through the gemfields, stopping at the walk in Sapphire mine, the next tour was a bit of a wait, so we decided to keep moving. We found the thong tree, tellembuggerum and stopped at the The New Royal Hotel for a drink. Turns out Gemfest starts tomorrow and they were gearing up for a massive week ahead. Back to Emerald where we popped into the shopping centre to grab a few bits then checked into our accommodation for the night, Emerald tourist park. We've just set up and are having a drink while planning ahead some tours and ferry tickets we need to book in. There are meant to be showers overnight, not looking forward to a packup in the wet, see how we go.Read more