To walk to the Manning gorge first you have to swim across the river so we decided not to leave too early as we are not fans of an early morning swim when it is cold hahaha
But once the sun comes up it warms up quite quickly so we set off and yes got in the chilli river with our back pack and cameras etc in a plastic tub that they supply to get all that gear over without getting wet. Once over the river I stcked two tubs on top of each and swam them back across for others that will use them behind us.
It was quite a walk into the gorge, up and down little valleys and over large rocks but wow when we arrive we were gob smacked at the beauty of this place. It was a huge waterfall and massive gorge and swimming area.
People everywhere but the shear size of the place meant you could fit 1000's of people into this place if needed and still have room to swim.
We spent a significant amount of time swimming and jumping off the rocks into the water. We only jumped from the kiddies rocks haha There were people jumping from way up the top of the waterfall which to us was crazy but each to their own.
After we were all wrinkly and well and truly water logged we walked back out. Quite a hot walk too as it is very exposed to the sun but of course we had the nice refreshing swim to get back across the river once back at camp.
Some people turned up and camped right next to us, laughably close really and they even blocked the poor bloke near us from being to hitch up his caravan when he leaves. We are not sure how all that will work out but people are so inconsiderate.
We then spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing around camp. It gets dark around 5:30pm so we never really have a lot of afternoon left. We try to cook tea while its still just light enough to see which out having to use the insect attracting lights.
As usual we had tea and went to bed a little tired from our strenuous walk.