We expected mountains. We find mountains with more of the wide plain between them.

The creek flows to the east, into, you guessed (or I hope you did), Weeli Wolli Creek.

Lots of signs about boiling, or chemical treatment required. So we added our normal chlorine.

Easier for us to fill buckets and pump than to connect the tank directly.

We needed about 90 litres to refill to 240 litres. Usage is consistent 14 litres/day. Showers tonight. Its nice knowing we can refill on the way out.

We struggled a bit to read the info at the office. Too dark and too much backlighting to comfortably read. But we paid for camping - credit card at the office, easier than cash at campsite reception.

We have been allocated campsite 99 at Dales campground. There are 140 sites, plus an overflow area. We are well away from the "generators welcome" area.

A brief visit by a Red-Capped Robin. It kept its safe distance. Brilliant colours.

Apparently uncommon, but seen often around the campground.

A small robin. Appropriate to an arid land.

Mobile phone here is Optus. Looks like the same trick as at William Creek. Provide limited coverage and provide the park office with sim cards. All very bizarre, some of the rest areas on the main roads have free wifi. Our magic 5m pole failed to get a Telstra signal. We'll use the satphone for letting daughters know where we are.

There was an elusive flock of about eight.

In the morning we'll walk along the top of the gorge to our right, descend into its bowels to visit Fern Pool, walk back along the bottom of the gorge to Circular Pool, then extricate ourselves by walking up a convenient track to the top. Thence back to the truck. Easy ....

This is about 5pm, another half hour before the light completely disappears. We'll set off early in the morning so the light is (we hope) good.

The last of the swimmers have just left. They appeared as ants next to the pool. Apparently the water is "fairly cold".

We know how it formed, as water eroded the weaknesses in the rock. And we can see where the waterfall is when water flows (the cleft on the left). But we can also look at a map and convince ourselves the longest bit of creek feeding the waterfall is only about 10 km long. And intermittent.

The Hamersley Range has more or less the oldest rocks on earth. Though the gorges are a geologically recent addition. The climate used to be wet. There was rain forest.

A bit hazy, which we found a tad surprising.

Sun is rising in front to the left.

This, and previous pic, are looking back (east).

Just about too much sun giving too much contrast for pics.

Helped by a few cypress pines.

Fern pool.

But we did hear the bats as the sun woke them.

A colony.

We imagine in a hundred years this will be a big tree.

We are walking east through the bottom of the gorge.

Hard to take a pic of where the gorge heads north from the junction.

The banded iron formation is around the pool. Looks like quartzite above that.

Enough to keep the pool full, with an overflow down the gorge.

The gorge is deeper where the two branches meet, the upper rock is the same thickness, more of the banded formation is exposed in the gorge bottom.

A painted finch among the spinifex at the edge of the gorge.

And people. There for a swim. Around 9am.

About 100m below us.

We met a few early morning walkers, but fewer parties than the fingers on my hand.

The steps out of the gorge challenged our legs, whereas the steepness of Mt Meharry challenged our lungs.

We are now calibrated in what to expect from "class 4" tracks.

Back on the plain, termite mounds and snappy gum recovering from fire.

Back to the truck for second breakfast and a day of dossing. The cooling breeze (stiff wind) is welcome. The temperature at the truck is around 31, it will rise to 32 deg C. Maybe the late risers in for a swim have the right idea.

It was pre-occupied with its food, and fully trained to ignore humans.

There are lots around the campground. Along with finches, cuckoo shrikes, spinifex pigeons, magpie larks, and the ubiquitous wagtails.

Our identification of cuckoo shrikes is being challenged as there are a couple of larger grey birds we see occasionally. We haven't seen them fly far, they behave a bit differently to the smaller grey birds with distinctive flight and wing shape.

The "usual" small flock.

Occasionally one stands still long enough. A female.

We can't decide if its the same variety of spinifex in different stages, or different varieties.

Spinifex is "tussocky". There are gaps between the tussocks, which makes for relatively easy walking.

From an unusual angle?

The swimming hole below the waterfall is hidden by the trees.

The lookout is difficult to distinguish, but is somewhere on the lip of the gorge on the left.

I keep repeating the topography to myself so as to become more familiar.

And perhaps a bit of knowing the way home.

We are guessing Dignam Gorge enters from the right, the south west, beyond the bend in the middle of the pic.

So now, back in the luxury of the truck we are mentally kicking ourselves for not walking another couple of km there and back - the sun would probably have been illuminating both sides of Dignam Gorge.

We may never know .....

But then again. Seven km is probably enough for our ageing bodies for one day. We remain grateful we can walk that far, and pleasantly surprised we are able to repeat the exercise the next day.

About as far as we walked. There are no recent tracks on the north east edge of the gorge.

We found a few rusty tins, a beer bottle, a couple of pieces of corrugated iron, and a stretch of old vehicle track with a tree growing in the middle. Further from the edge of the gorge than we walked looks like an old airstrip on satellite pics.

In 1978 I was travelling in an ex Sydney Taxi, 2 speed automatic Holden Kingswood. My recollections are hazy but I recall trying to reach this plain on what we considered reasonable dirt roads. I'll have to revisit the photos I took back then.

"Three Ways". The cream coloured fence of the "Three Ways Lookout" is on the far right of the pic, on the lip of the gorge.

Below and to the left of the lookout is the steep track up which we disengorged ourselves after our gorge bottom walk yesterday.

Circular Pool is out of the pic to the right, south east branch out of the pic to the left.

That magic moment, just as the sun dips below the horizon and the world glows.