Mornington

On my trip up the Gibb I spent 4 days at Mornington station. It is owned by Australian Wildlife Conservancy and has been managed as native animal habitat ever since they bought it in 2000.

The highlights of the trip include:

• Canoeing in Dimond Gorge (usually the most favoured site for proposals to dam the Fitzroy River) with a random backpacker - The backpacker came courtesy of the American volunteers dad. His dad was visiting, before doing a roadtrip to Darwin with him and his girlfriend, and then flying home with his son. He rocked up in the middle of nowhere with a nice 26 year old female backpacker in tow his son didn't know about until he got there. Random.
  


• Climbing Mt Leak with Claire and camping on the top, on a semi-flat rock with an angle slightly less than 30 degrees in a howling breeze rushing over the summit. We slept well! It is an excellent vantage point. You can see hills to the south out on the edge of the sandy desert, west to the King Leopold Range, and north to Mt House.
  



Mt Leak from near Sir John Gorge - 10kms away




• Meeting Tim Flannery (Australian of the Year in 2007, and famous scientist, with a reputation that allows him to express an opinion on scientific matters of public significance and be noticed). He is a director of Australian Wildlife Conservancy, and was at Mornington with 2 other directors after a tour checking out Charnley River Station. AWC is in negotiations to buy the station to add to their current list of 21 sanctuaries Australia wide.
  



The Fitzroy glistening in the afternoon sun, just down stream of Dimond Gorge




• Releasing a Northern Quoll the team had trapped at Mornington to show a journo and photographer from the West Australian. They arrived at the station a day late, but I discovered on my drive out that the photographer was Nic Ellis for those that know him. I didn't get a photo of the quoll. They run pretty fast! I got a great shot of blurred rock instead.

Sunset from the summit of Mt Leak