Charnley River Station

Charnley River Station

Today's post will be short & sweet with just the basics, as we are submitting an article on this to a 4WD magazine, we will keep you updated if it gets published. 

After a couple of crazy busy camps, we were keen for some thing quieter. It was almost 50km into Charnley River from the Gibb River Road on a decent bush track, it took about an hour, but there were a number of creek crossings & gates to slow down for. We arrived at the homestead with a warm welcome from Lorrie & Chicko and they told us a bit about the place. It is now owned by the Australian Wildlife Conservation with only a limited amount of grazing managed by the next door neighbours Mt House Station. We paid our $20 a person per night camp fees for 3 nights. It was expensive but we hoped it turned out to be what we expected. 

The camp area was large & grassy with flushing toilets & showers. We found a site all by ourselves a long way from any other campers, there were only about 6 other occupied campsites during our whole stay, which was awesome. We set up camp & headed out to our first water hole Donkey Hole. It has at least 3 pools & in the first one we saw a freshwater croc, so went up further to find a less crocy looking hole for a swim.  Just beautiful. Back at camp for a few afternoon beers & I started to feel a bit crook in the guts with cramps all night, by morning it was not pretty so most of the morning we stayed in camp, until the gastro stop tablets kicked in & I felt safe to go for a drive! We went up to Dillie gorge in the afternoon & again it was spectacular & we had it all to ourselves. The next day we went to the biggest of the gorges Grevillea which was one of the best gorges we have seen on our trip, we also did Lilly Pool as well & the lookout at Mt Glemont. We felt like we had seen a large piece of Charnley River station, but in reality it was only a tiny part. 

Spectacular secluded gorges & waterholes, amazing wildlife, scenery, great camping & great hospitality made Charnley River station a highlight of our trip so far. As it is now a conservation property there are no fires, pets, shooting or fishing allowed.