Mt Gibson Wildlife Sanctuary

Australian Wildlife Conservation is an excellent organisation dedicated to saving Aussie endangered species from extinction. One of their projects, Mount Gibson Wildlife Sanctuary near Paynes Find (WA), is a gem. We love it here.

The Sanctuary allows visitors to stay at the picturesque Quartz Ridge bushcamp with excellent facilities for 5 tents and 5 vehicles, including shiny camp kitchen and our best longdrop, bush dunny tower ever, set in the shade of York Gums. The $20/night/person fees go to the organisation, a cause we recommend and love to support by visiting some of their projects open to visitors all across Australia.

The delightful Mount Gibson bush habitat ranges from greenstone, quartz ridge, mallee, and York Gum, to saline lake and dune. Lots of rare fauna and flora here, including Woylies, Western Barred Bandicoots, Numbats, Greater Stick Nest Rats, Bilbies, Phascogales, Shark Bay Mice and Banded Hare-Wallabies.

A multimillion dollar exclosure, 45 kms long and protecting 7,800 hectares, keeps feral predators and goats at bay. The fence is electrified, has a floppy top, varying size meshes, and is dug into the ground.

There are 4 self drive/walk tours, very well explained and interpreted in brochures. 4wd is recommended, no go if wet, but if dry, the lovely red dirt tracks are easy, just go steady.

We did Tour 4, the Mushroom Rocks, a sacred Aboriginal site, which took us 30km (1 hour) of fun driving along dirt and rock tracks through the bush, passing the imposing Exclosure Fence (eat your heart out, Mr Trump, this one is for 4-legged animals!), and across glasswort flats to impressive mushroom rocks complete with pink neon drifts of flowers beside Lake Moore, a saline lake. We just squeezed past the overhang of two trees to reach the end of the track.

An easy, flat 3.7km return walking trail led us through more scenic rocks and purple flower flashes to a red dune beside Lake Moore, a saline lake. How beautiful, what a pleasure to be here.

Today, we did the Quartz Ridge Walk (Tour 3), a steep climb over rocks. The top rewarded us with splendid views of the surrounding area.

Wow, today is Gen's birthday, could not ask for a better gift from this incredible country that surprises every day we have been travelling.

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Mt Gibson Wildlife Sanctuary, Mount Gibson, AWC, Australian Wildlife Conservancy, Western Australia, WA