Australian travels...: Day 8, Class 6 gorge

So we got up at 6:30 and cooked up bacon and eggs - needed it after the night we had, also finishing off the JD - seriously, what where we thinking! haha

We headed to the visitors center, got fitted with wet suits and where off to the entry point, Knox's gorge. We where also fitted with helmets, gear for rock climbing and abseiling as well as inner tubes for cruising down the pools in the gorge. We hiked down to Knox gorge, and I'm sure we where all still drunk from the night before and we all just fed off each other, laughing the whole way down. Once we got to the base of the gorge we started our walk, and not 5 minutes into it, we crossed this small creek and Rob fell, well, seriously, we all laughed so hard, then made sure he was ok!!! Rich was also carrying a large waterproof sac and he somehow managed to get the inner tube stuck around the pack as we where posing for pictures. He was trying to stand up, but couldn't, well, you can imagine how we all laughed. We then decided that we would all get a picture doing the same thing, as well we got a video of us trying to walk with these things on! If you have ever seen the fifth element, we looked like the aliens at the start of the movie....I will try and add the video to the blog. We got to our first pool and got to practice our cliff jumping, a whole whopping 2M!! We continued on, tubing some of it, walking the rest and we hit a small section where the rocks where close together and we 'walked' through this area with our back against one side and out feet against the other. We felt like we where in an Indian Jones movie so we had to sing the introduction song as we climbed down. Briny, our tour guide just laughed at us! We then hit the no return area, we through our tubes down into a pool that we couldn't see the bottom of, and we slid down a natural water slid into a pool below!! Briny went first, then Rob, Rich and me. I was scared shitless and the pictures are hilarious as I slam into the water ass first!! It was about a 6M fall, so luckily I didn't hurt myself! We took funny pictures in the pool as Briny got the abseiling set up for us. It was about an 8M abseil, and the last time I abseiled I was in high school and I got my hair stuck in the carabiner! Rob went first, and then I went. I was really nervous and scared, as we abseiled down a small waterfall, but I did it well and wished I could have done it again! Once we where all down, we headed out into Red Gorge, where four gorges meet, and Briny unhooked the abseiling. We were being silly, of course, and thought we where being smart by taking the inner tubes to this small island - meanwhile, Briny wanted her tube so she didn't have to get right in the water! Oops, heehee! We then got to cruise down a bunch of pools with our inner tubes, walking between them. We had water fights in the pool and just being silly, having fun. We got to do 2 cliff jumps, one was about 6-7M, the other was 8M. The first one was very difficult to get to, and Rob had to help me pull myself up on the rock. I was scared shitless for the first one, but had so much fun doing it, when the second one came up I was all over it. Rob and Rich weren't too keen to do the second one, but because I was doing it, they had to!! After the second jump, we climbed out of the water and that was the end of our tubing, we let the air out of the tubes, and carried them like a sash the rest of the way. We had to climb up this waterfall and when I look back at it, boy was it dangerous as we had nothing to hang on to, so if you slipped, you where going down a very rough slid down the fall. The worst is if you are last, you are not walking on dry rocks which makes it more slippery, but it was still fun. We hit Ragants pool and Briny went to set up the rock climbing for us and we tried to climb around the pool on the rocks without getting wet. I couldn't do it, and Rich almost did it. Once Briny was back, she showed us how it was done.......very difficult as some of the rocks are steep with nothing to grab onto. So, now we rock climbed. It wasn't really much of a climb, more or less a climb of about 3M, then a walk across to the other side. I was first as I had never rock climbed before. I was very nervous, but loved it! Once we got to the other side, Briny went back to unhooked all the ropes, and we randomly ran into the rest of our group!! We took some pictures and when Briny was back, we took off as to not get stuck behind out group!! lol We climbed out at Hancock gorge, which was a very difficult climb out, labeled class 5, and was glad I had spider shoes and a wet suit on. People from the group had running shoes on and they got wet crossing the streams. We also saw some people climb down in just flip flops!???!! Are they asking for problems, it would take nothing to slip on a rock, and trust me, there where tons of loose rocks around. Once we got to the top we had a refreshing beer (as the bus was parked here and Lois was near-by as she didn't climb down) and waited for the rest of our crew to come back. We headed to Oxers lookout - which you could see where we had lunch in the gorge, and watched the sunset. We took a group picture then headed back to camp to make super. Stew tonight, made my team Ireland! Rob and I stayed up playing cards but hit the sac fairly early as we where all exhausted from a long day! We got a DVD from our abseiling day and the video is hilarious! We took close to 400 photo's and Briny said she had never laughed so hard on a tour, she said she was going to use our video for presentations!! LOVE IT!!!!