The historical past of Cobbold Gorge feels like a tall story — a 30-metre-deep outback gorge escaping detection to all however the Ewamian conventional house owners till 1992, regardless of the world round it having been farmed for nearly a century.
After I first heard that story, I used to be incredulous. How might such a landmark gorge, six hours’ drive inland from Cairns, go undiscovered by generations of station house owners and employees, at the same time as they routinely watered their cattle exterior its slender mouth?
It is not till I am trying down onto the gorge and the encircling panorama from a helicopter that such a blind spot appears in any approach conceivable.
“Some individuals say this reminds them of the Bungle Bungles,” says pilot Ricky as we fly over a convoluted and impenetrable panorama on Howlong Station. From above, the earth appears to be like irreparably damaged. A whole bunch of fractures run via an 80-square-kilometre expanse of sandstone, slicing the rock as neatly as bread. On foot, there’d be no approach over it, and there is definitely no approach via it.
Cobbold Gorge is only one of those cracks, deeper and wider than all others, however seen from afar even now solely by the glass bridge that straddles it.
I am travelling with Ricky on a sundown heli-picnic flight, choppering out into the so-called “sandstone nation” with an Esky full of wine, cheese and crackers. I will probably be dropped on a buttress of rock overlooking the huge Agate Creek valley, sharing a vibrant outback sundown solely with the occasional passing black cockatoo.
The picnic flight is one among a various assortment of experiences which have developed round Cobbold Gorge because it was found by station proprietor Simon Terry 30 years in the past. Mixed strolling and boat excursions run each day via the dry season. Australia’s first absolutely glass bridge spans the gorge, 17 metres above Cobbold Creek, and helicopters head to hidden fishing holes. On the gorge’s sprawling lodging and tenting village, kayaks splash throughout a big dam, and guests laze in an infinity pool.
Most curious of all on this outback setting are stand-up paddleboard (SUP) excursions, drifting deep into Cobbold Gorge.
From wherever however inside the gorge, the thought of such a water exercise looks like a mirage. The encircling savannah is sparse and dry, and the gorge feeds into the huge, dry mattress of the Robertson River. In distinction, spring-fed Cobbold Gorge flows year-round, and SUPing is a mild and immersive technique to discover it.
From beside a pontoon on the mouth of the gorge, I push my board out into Cobbold Creek and start paddling upstream, shifting as a small flotilla with a half-dozen different paddlers. For a time, the gorge is huge and open, with the rim of its cliffs lit by the late-afternoon solar. The riverbanks sit empty, although on a ship tour earlier within the day, a handful of freshwater crocodiles, one as massive as 1.5 metres, had been sunning alongside these rocks. Round 15 freshwater crocodiles inhabit the gorge, however now they’re someplace beneath me, unseen within the 20-metre-deep water.
The navigable part of Cobbold Gorge is about 840 metres in size, however the expertise is like burrowing into the earth. Shortly, the cliffs shut in and Australia’s first absolutely glass bridge, put in in 2019, passes excessive overhead. Scoured by water and rock, the cliffs curl and swirl in waves of rock, and Archer fish lurk slightly below the creek’s floor, ready to shoot bugs out of the air with jets of water.
The one sound is the splash of our paddles as we stand balanced on the huge boards, and shortly I can unfold my arms huge and virtually contact each partitions of the darkish gorge. The narrowness of the gorge is a sign of Cobbold’s youth. Fashioned simply 12,000 to 14,000 years in the past, it’s Queensland’s youngest gorge, eroding over that quick time into this digital paper lower within the earth. Finally, throughout coming millennia, the gorge will additional erode right into a a lot wider chasm.
On the gorge’s finish, we flip the SUPs and start to float downstream, squeezing again between the cliffs and beneath the glass bridge. We have been contained in the gorge for an hour, immersed in a water world that is extra tranquil than turbulent. It is the outback, however not as it.
THE DETAILS
TRAVEL
Fly to Cairns or Townsville with Virgin, Qantas or Jetstar. Cobbold Gorge is a six-hour drive from Cairns and a six-and-a-half-hour drive from Townsville.
PLAY
The gorge can solely be visited on guided excursions. All SUP, helicopter and strolling and boat excursions are organised by Cobbold Gorge Village. See cobboldgorge.com.au
STAY
Cobbold Gorge Village has tenting websites, in addition to fundamental motel-style models and elevated huts.
MORE
The author travelled courtesy of Tourism & Occasions Queensland.
