Qualla: Murchison River Gorge

Murchison River Gorge: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Give a slow river enough time and it becomes a knife. The Murchison does not look like much where it winds across the dry Mid West of Western Australia - shallow, brown, patient - but along its lower reaches it has cut a gorge more than eighty kilometres long and up to 129 metres deep, peeling back the country to expose striped walls of ancient sandstone. It begins inland, a little over thirteen kilometres north-northwest of the small settlement of Ajana, and runs all the way to the sea at Kalbarri, carving its zigzag signature into the rock the entire way. To stand on the rim is to grasp, in one look, just how much stone a thread of water can remove when it is given long enough to work.

Read more: Murchison River Gorge on Qualla

Murchison River Gorge: The Making of a Canyon

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The gorge is the river's masterpiece, and the medium is Tumblagooda Sandstone - layers of fluvial and coastal sediment laid down hundreds of millions of years ago and later lifted into a high, dry plateau. The Murchison did the rest, working downward grain by grain across an enor...

Read more: Murchison River Gorge on Qualla

Murchison River Gorge: Footprints in the Walls

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Geologists travel here for what the gorge has laid bare. The exposed Tumblagooda Sandstone is famous for its trace fossils - not bones, but the marks living things left as they moved. Trackways crisscross the rock, the most striking being long paired rows of dents recording arthr...

Read more: Murchison River Gorge on Qualla

Murchison River Gorge: A River of Two Moods

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Murchison is a creature of extremes, and the gorge records both of its faces. For much of the year the river is reduced to a chain of still pools strung along the canyon floor, fringed by river red gums and so quiet you can hear insects over the water. Then the inland rains c...

Read more: Murchison River Gorge on Qualla

Murchison River Gorge: Standing on the Rim

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For all its scientific weight, the gorge is first of all a place of plain astonishment. Lookouts perch along its edge, the best known at the Z Bend, where the river kinks back on itself far below. The Loop walking trail follows a great horseshoe of the canyon and passes Nature's ...

Read more: Murchison River Gorge on Qualla