Climbing Crocodile Rock

About 100 kms east of Kununurra the Great Victorian Highway takes a few sweeping bends passed a most interesting rock formation. Ever since my first trip up north aged seven I have always remembered this part of the road and it would seem I am not the only one. I believe it may be a part of Gregory National Park but it is always hard to tell where these things begin and finish.

My parents have recently returned to New Zealand after their annual trip to Kununurra and it was during their time here that my Dad suggested climbing this formation as it had always fascinated him as well. He had looked it up on google earth and named it Crocodile rock as that is what it looks like from above.

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So early one morning my brother Paul and my Dad headed East and ended up having a wonderful time exploring this place so I thought I would share a few photos of the morning with you all.

From the ground it doesn’t look like much as a fire had recently been through and burnt everything. It did make the start of the walk very easy though!

Here I am a little closer and you can see that the fire did not burn past the base of the hill. Have a look closely to the far left of the formation and you can see two horizontal slabs of rock with a gap between them.

Here it is using a zoom lens. This is where we wanted to get to.

There was the occasional splash of colour and the sky was a brilliant blue. I believe this might be a Kapok flower.

As we started to climb a little the view began to improve.

Here is my Dad. Considering he is awfully close to 70 years of age he was as agile as any billy goat going around that day. I hope we get the chance to do a few more of these types of walks together in the near future.

Stopping for a rest with my brother here I managed to get attacked by a bee. Although he only stung me on my finger I must of somehow rubbed some of the poison onto my lip which over the next hour proceeded to swell up quite impressively! Notice the size of the boulders? They were huge and had been scattered all over the area.

After that little bit of excitement we pressed on and soon found ourselves getting closer to our destination.

The final few minutes proved the most challenging but thankfully this tree was in the perfect position to allow us to reach our goal.

We sat up in the gap for quite a while admiring the view. The wind was rushing through at quite a speed and as it was in the shade it actually became cold. Soon we began the trek back down to the car and home to the farm. A great morning spend with family, I hope you enjoyed it also.