We're almost home

And so we left Lake Dalrymple and the people we had met there, including the ageing cattleman who was living out of the back of a truck, left, with a tarp thrown over it, while he took care of cattle he had on agistment on a nearby property. Until the drought breaks, that’s his life.
We drove across the base of the great Burdekin Falls dam spillway, then covered the 135km to Collinsville in several hours as it was a really bad dirt road. From then on, we were in the heart of coal-mining country with massive coal trains on the railway lines and good bitumen roads, so we headed south towards Nebo and stayed at Lake

Our truck dwarfed by the spillway at the Burdekin
Falls Dam.

Elphinstone, a natural lake where black swans and coots live and where local water ski club  members have a shed.

It was further south towards the Rockhampton-Longreach highway that we saw the first green grass in paddocks since we had left NSW all those months before, and even then, it was only fleeting.

After catching up with friends in Gracemere, on Rockhampton’s western outskirts, we went on to Yeppoon for three lovely nights with our friends, Judith and Barry.

We talked and laughed and ate and drank until we left on Tuesday morning, heading for Mount Morgan and Biloela and places south. We loved Mount Morgan, with its historic buildings, and ended our day at the Mulgildie pub, just south of Monto, where camping is encouraged in the pub’s backyard.



Lots of oversize loads were on the coal country roads,
including this giant bucket.

We had a great meal at the pub, chatting with the young Swedish backpacker running the bar, then fell into bed soon after 7.30pm, exhausted by our revelries of the previous few days.

Before reaching Monto we had detoured to the Cania Gorge National Park and Cania Dam so today we detoured again south of Monto to the Waruma Dam. There were masses of caravans and motorhomes camped right on the water’s edge but we weren’t tempted to stay.

One of Mount Morgan's old buildings.

Along the way today we bought groceries at Eidsvold and fuel at Mundubbera, where we started to see the citrus orchards for which the area is famous.  

We stopped early at Gayndah, as we were both tired, and tomorrow will make a final push to stay with friends near Pomona, then spend the weekend with family in Brisbane.

After that, it’s back to Richmond Hill and HOME!

Across north-west Queensland

October 15: This is the day of writing, but don’t know when we’ll be back in internet service area to post this blog.

 

We’re happily camped high on a hill overlooking Lake Dalrymple, the waterway formed by the Burdekin Falls Dam, south-east of Charters Towers.

The country across the NT and Qld is as dry as dust.

To get here from Tennant Creek in the NT, which we left on Oct 9, first we called just outside that town at the old telegraph station, part of Australia’s communications history, then made a turn to the east at the Three Ways (just a roadhouse) and continued across the rather tedious Barkly Tableland until we reached Camooweal, where we spent the night in a small park behind the service station.



Brolga sculptures from old junk in the
 hamlet of Nelia

It was a short drive the next day to Mt Isa, where we wanted to catch up with the sister of John’s son-in-law, Chris. We had a great afternoon with her, spent the night in a caravan park, and left next day for Richmond. There we stayed for two nights beside the town’s artificial lake, a great place, with a paved path all around, lit at night, and a wonderful place for the locals to fish, ski and indulge in other water sports.

A storm blew up on our second afternoon there and we actually got some rain! The country is desperately dry and camped in the caravan park were some volunteers with Aussie Helpers, as well as the founder, Brian Egan. They had been going around the local stations, seeing who needed hay, as they had seven road trains of hay coming west from Bowen the next Friday. Graziers were invited to bring their trucks to town, where a barbecue would be held and they could collect their fodder. It’s all paid for by donations and run by volunteers.

One of them told us they had a camera crew going around with them, and in fact, they were being filmed the morning we left, sitting at one of the caravan park barbecue shelters, planning their day. The camera crew is from the UK and they are making a documentary on drought in Australia to be shown on the English-language version of Al Jazeera TV network.

 

Richmond is home to Kronosaurus Korner, a wonderful museum of fossils found locally when the area was part of a huge inland sea. The Kronosaurus was a particularly nasty bit of works, reproduced in fibreglass outside. The fossils are marvellous, including the most complete dinosaur skeleton in Australia, quite a small chap.

From Richmond it was only a short drive to Hughenden, which I hadn’t visited since I was a child, when we lived there for a few years.

On the way in I was thinking it was sad that I had nobody alive in the family to let know I had found and photographed our old house/school/or convent where my sister and I learnt music. As it turned out, I couldn’t find any of those places. The house has been replaced with something more modern; the state school is vastly changed and now caters for K-12; and the lovely old convent was torn down and replaced by something more utilitarian. The caravan park, near the railway station, used to be the site of the hospital when we lived there in the 1950s, so that was vaguely familiar.

It was a much cooler day after the storms so we drove 70km north to Porcupine Gorge, called Australia’s little Grand Canyon. It is indeed magnificent.

The Boer War memorial kiosk.

The next day, we went on to Charters Towers, had lunch in Lissner Park which is such a green oasis in the middle of the drought-stricken country all around. I thought the birds were chattering in the grand old trees above us until John told me to have a look . . . they were full of thousands of flying foxes! The lovely old kiosk, as it is called, was a memorial to the Charters Towers men who went to the Boer War, all horsemen. I had spent formative years of my adolescence in that town, so enjoyed seeing it again (that’s the third visit for me since 2007).

Some of the thousands of flying foxes in Lissner Park.

We decided to go towards Townsville, turning south at Mingela, through Ravenswood to the Burdekin Falls Dam, with a dirt road linking that area to Collinsville, for anyone who’s following us on a map.

The caravan park is the site of part of the village for the 1900 dam construction workers in the 1980s and we walked around this morning having a look at where some of the buildings were. There are still two tennis courts and what was an old swimming pool (there’s a newer one for the campers). The resident ranger told us when collecting the VERY expensive camping fees ($15 a night!) that he’s met a former dam worker in Townsville who told him they were really well looked after, with a bar and a store, and girls brought in on a Friday night, installed in a donger, and taken out on the Monday.

The Burdekin Falls Dam, with the roadway to the left of the pillars
at the base of the spillway.

There is a flock of peacocks here, apparently descended from a pair one of the men living in married quarters here during construction had in his garden. He left them here when the dam was completed in the late 1980s and apparently the flock built up to about 200 before some culling. Even the three peacocks still make a racket when they give their unearthly shriek, and their many peahens honk. Wallabies are everywhere, and so is their dung, but last night we sat outside and had about four feeding on leaves only a metre or so away.

There are not many campers here, but two have moderately large dogs. However one is blind and the other is very old and deaf, so I think the wallabies and peacocks are safe.

When we leave tomorrow morning we will drive across the bottom of the spillway towards Collinsville, obviously a way not available when water is rushing over the spillway. The ranger tells us it’s a fairly rough road, but as veterans of the Plenty, the Tanami Desert and the Gibb River roads, we’ll tackle it with good humour.

It promises to be a hot afternoon so we’ll take a dip in the pool and relax in the shade of the big African mahogany trees around the campground.

 

Starting the long drive home

With some reluctance, but also some joy, we left Darwin on October 7, heading homewards after all these months.

We’d had a wonderful time in Darwin, parked in the driveway of the home of Fred and Lyn Barlow, with our stay extended to two weeks because of John’s operation (see previous blog) and the need for his surgeon to check him a week later.

We got the all-clear on Monday, Oct 6, so we were ready to go by the Tuesday morning.

One stop on the way south from Darwin was at a mango farm which produces the most glorious ice-creams. We’d had some at the open-air Deckchair Cinema in Darwin, John phoned, and arranged to collect some on our way south. So now we have the bottom of our little freezer packed with these 200ml tubs of tropical flavour.

Gorgeous boy at Mataranka.

We stopped in Katherine just long enough for me to catch up with a cousin there. We’d had lunch in Darwin with her sister and husband and the daughters of each of these cousins. They were all off to Singapore later this week to help the son of the Darwin cousin (Coral) celebrate his 50th birthday and recent marriage to an Indonesian beauty. So I was so glad we caught up when we did.

Then we drove down the Stuart Highway to Mataranka (about 38 C but no humidity, so it was actually a little more pleasant than Darwin) where we stayed the night.

We had to dissuade an over-friendly peacock and his harem from pinching our cheese and bikkies before dinner, but the caravan park was almost empty, showing that it really is nearing the end of the dry season.

Today we have driven more than 500km to Tennant Creek, just south of where we will go back to turn east tomorrow towards Mt Isa.

The countryside is dry and often quite burnt but there is still something wonderful about these Central Australian open spaces. Also wonderful, and mirth-producing, are the thousands of termite nests, many of which have been ‘dressed’ in t-shirts, caps and sometimes sunglasses by passers-by.

We couldn’t stop to photograph many as invariably we had massive road trains on our tails, but we certainly enjoyed looking at them.

Tomorrow we’ll have an easy day, just a few hundred km to Barkly Homestead, then on to Mt Isa.

We’ve admitted to each other that we are really ready to go home after all this time, and all the things that have gone wrong, although an enormous amount has gone right and we’ve seen some glorious parts of Australia.

Tropical heat in Darwin

Lovely Berry Springs.

We’ve been in Darwin now for a week, with at least another week planned, parked in the driveway of the house belonging to our friends, Lyn and Fred Barlow.

On our way into Darwin we wove around a little, driving west to Dundee Beach (beautiful aqua water but too many crocs for swimming, the locals told us at a tiny beachfront Saturday morning market). We then called into the Berry Springs to see all the people having picnics and swimming in the clear fresh water.

One of the reasons we’re in Darwin for so long is that weeks ago, just after we had left Broome and were on the Dampier Peninsula, John got a call on his mobile from his heart specialist on the Central Coast.

The backside of the huge B-52 bomber, overshadowing
the other aircraft at the aviation museum.

As many of the readers of this blog know, he had a defibrillator fitted at the end of 2011 and has six-monthly checks to see what it’s been doing, if anything. So far it’s hardly had any work at all and he was told the battery would last for 8 years. He also has a monitor that plugs into power and sends messages to Berlin, if you please, every night (if there’s mobile phone coverage). Naturally, we’ve been in and out of power/phone coverage, but apparently the engineers in Berlin who monitor this device could see a worrying battery trend that they had noticed in two other such devices around the world.



Fred Barlow at the helm as we left his Cullen Bay
marina berth.

So they’d alerted the Aussie doc, he contacted John and suggested he have it checked and probably replaced in Darwin. John let him know when we were about a week away from Darwin and an appointment was made at a cardiac clinic here.

We kept that appointment last Tuesday, and even though the battery shows it’s still 86% full, the Berlin engineers say it will drop like a stone very soon . . . so on Monday (tomorrow) he goes back to the private hospital here for a local anaesthetic and replacement of the unit. 

There’s to be no driving for a week and then it will depend on when he feels like driving the truck. We hired a car when we first arrived, because it’s easier to explore in a car rather than the truck, and I’ve extended that hire by a week. I’ll be the chauffeur while he’s out of action.

We were tossing around as I took this sunset pic.

So far we’ve been driving all over Darwin, been to see a movie at the open-air Deckchair Theatre, caught up with a cousin living just opposite the Sailing Club, where we had a meal one night. We’ve been sailing with Lyn and Fred in their yacht and one night when they were at a function, John and I took a picnic of oysters and prawns to the parkland at Nightcliff, overlooking the ocean. There were hundreds of people having twilight picnics, walking their dogs, and cycling along the paths.



Birthday boy and his ice-cream cake.

We spent a whole morning at the Aviation Museum and intend having a visit to the Darwin museum and art gallery.

Last night I cooked a special meal to mark John’s 72nd birthday and we all drank champagne and red wine as we ate roast pork and a special ice-cream cake I’d made, sitting on the Barlows’ breezy back verandah. 

The heat is pretty intense, as is the humidity. As I write this, just before 10am, it’s 29 degrees, with 66% humidity and we’re told Darwin is having an early ‘build-up’ to the wet season. Top temperature today is predicted to be 32, which is actually quite moderate as it’s been hotter in previous days, but the humidity is definitely increasing.

 

 

 

 

Melons, fridge panic and flowing water

When we left the Douglas Daly Tourist Park we went exploring further south, even though the road is a dead-end, as that’s where we’d seen road trains coming from laden with cattle, hay and melons. It was also where the irrigation boys we’d met had laid out piping for 1200 acres of sandalwood.

Tiny sandalwood trees, and the host trees which their roots
 parasitise, as far as we could see.
 

Sure enough, we found those new plantations, stretching as far as we could see; also cattle stations, and those growing grass for hay, with all the road fences protected against wallabies with mesh wire into the ground.

Melon-harvesting was under way, and we had been told the season was almost over, with the owner of that vast growing area about to go to his other melon farm in Oakey, Queensland. 

The last of the melon harvest.

We then took a different road to the famous old Daly River Crossing, a low-level number now replaced with a high-level bridge. Just outside that little settlement (just a police station, a pub and a few houses, but crawling with barramundi fishermen when the fish are biting), there are a number of fishermen’s camps, retreats and tourist parks.

We chose Wooliana on the Daly, as far downstream as we could get, but still 78km from the sea. From there on it’s pretty wild country and the river anywhere is full of salties.

The almost-empty Wooliana caravan park.

This was a pretty place to stay as the owner keeps the grass well-watered, it had a lovely little swimming pool, and in contrast to being full every June, July and August, with those 3 months already booked out next year, there were just three couples staying there . . . and one came from Ballina!

When we stopped for morning tea on our way back to the highway, I found the fridge seemed to be de-frosting, had a light on, but the motor was not going. By the time we reached Adelaide River on the highway, we were at minor panic stations as this was the fridge that had had a complete new unit installed early this year.

John phoned an Engel repair place in Darwin, I phoned Lyn Barlow to say we’d be with them that day, instead of several days later, we bought ice and put it in the fridge crisper, transferring the big slab of melon we’d had there to the sink, and we lead-footed it to Darwin, only an hour or so away.

We called at the Engel repair place, and the bloke was more interested in telling us what costs would be than what might be wrong. John told him he’d have to un-build the fridge from the cabinet and would bring it back the next day and off we went to a warm welcome from the Barlows.

After coffee and much chat we were about to transfer our ice and the fridge contents into a borrowed esky . . . and we found the fridge was working again! We monitored it through the night and it behaved perfectly.  John called a national Engel service centre the next morning and was told the compressor may have turned itself off because the fridge was over-iced. We HAD turned it well down to cope with the large slab of hot melon we’d put in a day or so earlier and had not returned the temp to normal so that seemed perfectly feasible. And if we hadn’t shoved a big bag of ice in at Adelaide River, it probably would have started working earlier.

Anyway . . . after lunch that day, we drove back south to resume our journey as we wanted to find the WWII airfield where one of John’s uncles had served, as well as spend some time in Litchfield National Park.

Not a graveyard but magnetic termite mounds, built north-south.

His Uncle Joffre had been at Coomalie Creek where now there is a tourist park of sorts, so we pulled in there. There was power, so we could run the air-con (an essential as the days and nights get hotter). Late in the afternoon when the owner returned from Darwin and heard of our interest, he piled us into his all-terrain vehicle, a Ranger, told John to grab a beer, took 2 for himself, and we set off on a mad drive across the highway and up a steep and rocky hillside, with him pointing out various remains of wartime buildings, hurtling upwards and sideways, occasionally thrusting his beer can at me to hold when he really needed two hands on the wheel. Halfway through he switched to the second can and we hurtled down the hill, across the highway again (no road trains, thank goodness) and we explored his place. He gave us some wartime history books to read and gave us the name and phone number of the man who owns the property on which the old airfield is situated and where a chapel built during the war has been re-created.

We did try to call the next morning, but no response, so we continued to explore Adelaide River and its historic railway precinct before turning north again to enter Litchfield Park.

We’ve had two great days here, staying at a park on the western side, which once again has power so we can cope with the hot nights. This morning we left at 8am and were at the Buley Rockholes near the eastern side of the park by 8.30am to be the first people swimming in those glorious pools.

The glorious Buley Rockholes.

By the time we left around 9.30 the tour groups and individuals were starting to arrive.

Wangi Falls, still flowing at the end of the
 dry season.

We also swam at Wangi Falls close to noon, and then sensibly returned to our park for lunch and to turn on the essential cooling system. We’ve walked to lookouts, but not to the bottom of Florence Falls (too hot) and there are several 4WD areas we’ve promised ourselves we’ll explore in the Jimny next time we come to the Top End, probably soon after the Wet ends, maybe in 2016.

 

We’ll bring the trailer then, with the little Jimny on it, and stick to bitumen all the way. There was no way we were going to trail it this time, with all the dirt roads we planned to negotiate.

So now we may spend one more day and night somewhere on the way back to Darwin, or we may just go straight there, but that will be where I probably will next get enough phone reception to post this blog.

 

Hotting up in the NT

When we bought fruit and vegies from a Kununurra orchard,
we were greeted by the family pet.

We left Kununurra, quite reluctantly, but looking forward to new adventures just across the border in the Northern Territory. It was just a short drive of less than 300km to the Victoria River Roadhouse, beside the Victoria River, obviously, with a campground, bar and restaurant.

While we were having a meal that night, we were chatting to the driver of a low loader who’d pulled in. When he heard we’d come across the Plenty Highway from Boulia to Alice Springs, he told us he’d come from that area, worked as a rodeo clown, and in the 1980s had worked on Macsland, a property being run by a cousin of mine.

I told him I had family links to the area and he then astonished me by saying the young fellow 

Spear grass as tall as the truck near Victoria River.

helping behind the bar . . . who was also a helicopter pilot based there doing scenic tours . . . was also from Boulia.

Sure enough, he ambled along soon for a chat and it turns out he lives on the next property to our friends Adrian and Vicky Wells and of course knows lots of my family members. So there we were, in the middle of the Northern Territory, having Old Home week.

Next day we moved on just under 200km to Katherine, but after exploring the town, decided to venture further north on the Stuart Highway, going east from it to Edith Falls, where there’s a simple campground and a cheery woman running a kiosk who makes a pretty decent barra burger. 

Lovely Edith Falls near Katherine.

We spent the night there, rather hot, as there’s no power and our air-conditioning needs 240v, but had a couple of swims in the glorious big pool under the falls. It was too hot to walk up to higher falls but plenty of young people were doing that.

The next day, almost delirious with relief to be back on bitumen roads, we did some real exploring, even venturing onto some red dirt roads! First we went to Pine Creek, a former gold mining centre, where we got some essential supplies and checked out the local railway museum and a display of fabulous old 

If we'd had wings we could have taken off at the WWII
McDonald airstrip.

mining gear.

Then a little further on, we turned off onto a very old bitumen road (would it be WWII vintage, we wondered) which led after 5km to the McDonald airfield and runway, one of the many WWII airfields along the Stuart Highway. We motored right to the end of it, had morning tea, then drove back to the access road and eventually the highway.

We left it again on the eastern side to fine the heritage-listed Grove Hill Hotel, right out in the middle of nowhere. It has a mining and railway-building past, still has big mines all around it so the roads leading there are pretty good for dirt roads, and is the most incredible building, all corrugated iron and iron pipe frames (to stop the termites attacking).

 

Don't laugh . . . it's heritage-listed.

Inside it has a rather dusty museum showing the area’s history, with lots of stuff donated by district people. There’s a wall display of beers still in their cans and bottles and the gnarled old Dutch barman showed us the Grove Hill mug, just plain black, until you put boiling water in it, and all the illustrations and words appear. So we had to have one!



The Grove Hill Hotel mug.

Old tools and junk make up the name on the pub.

There’s camping in the back yard, but it’s surrounded by wrecked cars and blokes living in old caravans. The barman told us they put on a bbq and music the last Saturday of the month, attended by 200-300 people, and already a heap of dongas they have in that back yard are already booked out for the September event.

Even though it’s right beside the Darwin-Adelaide railway line, and a freight train went past while we were there, camping didn’t appeal, so we crossed the highway again, heading west into the Douglas Daly region of the Douglas and Daly Rivers. We are happily established at the Douglas Daly Tourist Park, under huge old mahogany trees with a glorious pool for swimming as the Douglas River beside the park is home to saltwater crocs.

On our way from the highway we passed big plantations of trees, all mahogany we were told, and the people next to us who left this morning in a hu-u-uge motorhome had been in charge of a 1200-acre irrigation system for sandalwood plantings. There’s a whole team of workers living in dongas here who work for the sandalwood company, the same as in Kununurra.

The irrigation head honcho told us this morning his team is now off to a property west of Katherine for about 6 weeks work putting in irrigation for about 400 acres of yet more sandalwood. Then he and his wife will trundle off home to Swan Hill in Victoria until after the wet season when they return to the NT for more work.

 

Walking boots and waterfalls

We’re well into our second week in Kununurra, with plans to leave on September 9 (next Tuesday).

The weather is getting hotter every day (36C today and 38C forecast for Tuesday) and we’re making full use of the caravan park pool, amongst its palms and other foliage.

Evidence of a massive earth movement.

We had a great excursion to the Bungle Bungles this week, flying by light aircraft from Kununurra, over Lake Argyle to Purnululu National Park, being taken by 4WD bus to the starting point of a walk, which ended up being about 10km in the hottest part of the day.  After we’d been flown back to Kununurra, with an aerial view of the Argyle Diamond Mine in its extinct volcano on the way, we had a quick swim, then lay about panting in the late afternoon before turning in and sleeping for about 11 hours.

But it was really worth it, as we saw some fabulous geology as we explored parts of the Bungle Bungles.

This whole Kimberley region is just about as old as the earth’s crust, it seems, with some ranges and rocks dating back billions of years.

 On the flight south from Kununurra, the pilot pointed out  

Walking into one of the Bungle Bungles' many gorges.

a range formed when two plates in the earth pushed against each other . . . fantastic from the air!

Flying also gave us a better perspective on the Ord River Irrigation Scheme which we’d only explored by hire car.  We saw the massive sandalwood plantations as well as those growing mangoes, and other crops being cultivated near the irrigation channels.

WA's biggest mango plantation at Kununurra.

After a day’s rest we took off again early one morning for a bus ride to El Questro, a property about 80km from Kununurra, on the last stages of the Gibb River Road. First was Emma Gorge, a resort with a rather special gorge and icy pools that it took us an hour to clamber over rocks to reach. And

Soaking in the warm water at Zebedee Springs.

then we had to climb over and around those same rocks to get back.

We then were driven to the main part of this station, stopping at the warm Zebedee Springs for a glorious soak, especially under a small waterfall. Lunch was barramundi or steak, both excellent in this part of the world, then it was time to be taken to the Chamberlain River for a cruise through the Chamberlain Gorge. We only saw part of its 128km length, but it was wonderfully impressive.

We moored in what the crew call their fish sanctuary . . . only because the archer fish,  

The wonderful Chamberlain gorge

catfish and big barramundi there know that when a boat moors, they get fed.  We saw many at close quarters, and as well as feeding them, the crew plied us with champagne and fresh Ord River fruit such as three different kinds of melon and starfruit. 

Fish food in one hand, bubbly in the other.

By the time we were dropped off in Kununurra that evening, we’d been enjoying ourselves for 12 hours, so once again, we fell into bed.

Everything is working well on the truck again, with batteries replaced, and today it got a new set of rear tyres. We’ve tried out most of the restaurants and cafes attached to touristy places and have had some great food experiences.

Tomorrow we’ll go to the local markets again but now we know what they serve, we’ll have breakfast there. We have some more exploring to do around the farming areas and have promised ourselves a sunset from a rocky lookout above the town. We’ve checked out the Argyle diamonds in some shops here, but because the pink ones are incredibly rare (we’re told only a champagne glassful is found each year) even the smallest chip is worth thousands of dollars, and the champagne-coloured ones are not far behind in price.

Before we know it, we’ll be handing back our little hire car, packing up the Isuzu and heading east to Victoria River, on the way to Katherine.

Water everywhere at Kununurra

We’ve had almost a week in Kununurra, sorted out batteries and tyres, staying in a delightful caravan park with a palm-fringed pool just across a narrow street from our site. The temperature has been in the 30s each day, cooling nicely in late afternoon, so it has been really pleasant.

We are really doing the tourist thing, taking tours and hiring a small car to get around, rather than  

Sunset on Lake Argyle.

unbuckling the motorhome from power and water and taking in its annexe. This morning we booked in for another week, so we’ll leave on September 9.

Our first tour was on Lake Argyle, going by small bus from Kununurra the 78km to the lake, formed by the Ord River Dam. We visited the old Durack family homestead at Argyle Downs, that would have been ‘drowned’ when the lake filled, but was taken apart and reconstructed, stone by stone. There are gravestones there for family members, including Elizabeth and Mary Durack, so we paid special attention to that of Elizabeth, as she’s the mother of our friend Mike Clancy in Brisbane (I went to school with his wife Marg).

The inland sea of Lake Argyle.

Then the 8 of us boarded a 50ft catamaran for lunch and a full afternoon cruising and swimming on the lake. It is so big it is classed as an inland sea. Its sole purpose is to keep Lake Kununurra, 55km downstream on the Ord, topped up as it’s the one that supplies irrigation water for the whole Ord River Irrigation Scheme.

 Apparently it would take the water from five Port Phillip Bays to fill Lake Argyle and I can well believe it. It is supposed to have 25,000 freshwater crocs living in it but we only saw one basking on a rocky shore. 

One of the passengers swimming in the lake.

After seeing the sunset from the catamaran, we eventually landed and were driven home in the dark.

Our own private wanderings have taken us to Wyndham (fairly dusty, depressing little town where everything was shut on a Saturday morning) where we wound our way up a long hill to the Five Rivers Lookout. That shows Cambridge Gulf, with five rivers emptying into it, including the Ord.

There’s a fascinating striped rock found near here called zebra rock and we’ve visited the two places that have galleries of items made from that rock. One was beside Lake Kununurra and had catfish near a little jetty that one could feed. The original pumphouse for the irrigation, now disused, has become a restaurant, and also has dozens of big catfish lurking, waiting for diners on the verandah to throw over some bread. 

An albino catfish among the feeding frenzy.

We were interested in how the irrigation scheme is going as there have been many agricultural disasters with sugar and rice, for example, as well as cotton-growing.

We’d been told that Indian sandalwood is the new ‘wooden gold’ with a huge export market into Asia where it’s burnt in temples all day every day. Sure enough we saw lots growing, as well as big plantations of mangoes.

We couldn’t work out why the sandalwood plantations seemed to have various varieties of trees, but a most information visit to a Sandalwood factory informed us that the young sandalwood trees need certain host trees, whose roots they parasitize, eventually killing them.

One of the great irrigation channels.

There are now 6000 hectares under sandalwood here, not nearly as much under mangoes, and we also saw crops of chia, sorghum, corn, cane, pumpkins, melons, & papaws. The great irrigation channels extend north-west from the town 48km  . . . we followed one of the roads out of interest, beside such a channel, only turning around when the bitumen finished.

We’re told that new area we saw is the second stage of the scheme, and if we’d driven another 10km, we’d have been in the Northern Territory, where in fact the irrigation scheme is to be extended. 

A huge paddock of chia in the extended irrigation area.

There is such a supply of water here that the caravan park has signs up encouraging campers to use the sprinklers left around the place to keep the place looking green. John has turned into a right little sprinkler-holic, setting them up all around our site whenever we’re in residence.

Tomorrow we will do a flight from here to the Bungle Bungles, land, do some walking in the gorges, have lunch, then fly back, taking in the Argyle diamond mine, Lake Argyle and the irrigation areas from the air. A few days later we’ll be taken on a tour of El Questro, involving gorge-walking and cruising and lots of swimming.

We had intended ending our run along the Gibb River Road with a stay at El Questro, but this will be much better, being taken around in someone else’s vehicle.

We had to take our Avis car back to the airport this morning (no point in having one when we’re away on tours). It’s a nuisance having to collect and deposit a car at the airport, so we’d already arranged to get a Hertz car from a depot in the town for next weekend. While at the airport, two big Chinook Army helicopters had landed, and quite a lot of people had come out from the town to watch them take off again.

The original Ivanhoe Crossing of the Ord River, now
closed to vehicles.

One of the locals told us that when a Hercules lands, people rush out from town, as they can hear it’s different from the planes landing and taking off on tourist flights, or the commercial flights to and from Darwin, Broome and Perth.

Obviously, not a lot happens in Kununurra, but we like it a lot and have found quite a lot to do here. 

A final thought. The colours of the Kimberley are not just red rock and blue sky. There’s a lot of those two, obviously, but there’s also the straw colour of dry season spear grass and spinifex, the pale green of lots of smallish trees, bright green of new spinifex coming through after burning, and the blue-green of the waterways, particularly around Kununurra.

 

Gibb River Road

This will be an episodic post as we’ve been out of internet service for about 10 days:

August 20:

After a restful three days in Derby . . . explored that old port town; found jam, fruit cake, honey and scones at the Saturday markets in the CWA cottage grounds; and discovered a butcher with not only fabulous meat but also lots of frozen barramundi and threadfin salmon . . . we stocked up with groceries and left town, pausing only to view the old prison boab and the longest cattle trough in the southern hemisphere.

500 cattle could drink at once from this trough.

The boab, of huge significance to the local Aborigines, is believed to be 1500 years old and was so big, with a hollow interior, that it was often used to keep prisoners contained on their way to Derby jail. The trough, attached to a bore, was used to water stock arriving at the town and could water 500 at a time, being 322m long.

Then we left town, but stopped on the Gibb River Road after only 3km to visit the Mowanjum Arts Centre, a glorious building hosting work by local Aboriginal artists. I’d done research on their website and knew we wanted to see some work by some talented sisters, one of whom specialises in Gyorn Gyorns, slim black figures. We found one that we liked and it’s to be posted to us at home in late October.

The prison boab in which men were held.

Just another 10 or so kms on, we stopped for the day at Birdwood Downs, a property run by the US-based Institute of Ecotechnics. It’s owned it since the late 1970s and has restored badly-overgrazed land to improved pasture. There’s a small campground and a set of nice little cabins surrounded by flourishing bougainvillea, and a pineapple and banana orchard, as well as horses and cattle. We were the only campers for some hours, then a Welsh couple arrived in a tiny little Suzuki with a ‘topper’ tent which unfolded on the vehicle roof.

The next morning, we drove 124 km (and the bitumen ended, putting us back on red dirt corrugations) before turning south towards Windjana Gorge National Park.

The campground has a dramatic backdrop of the Napier Range, an ancient Devonian-age reef through which a river has made its way, so the gorge walk is great, with freshwater crocs lying around in the water of the dry season pools. So definitely no swimming!

Another 35km down the road is the Tunnel Creek National Park, with a creek actually making its way through the range. So reef-walking shoes and a torch were necessary as the water was about up to our knees in places. The dirt road was appalling and it took us an hour to do the 35km but well worth it for the walk in the dark. 

Freshwater crocs at Windjana Gorge.

A National Parks volunteer had told us the day before to go outside the tunnel at the far end before returning and look for some Aboriginal rock art about 50m along the creek edge. This we found, much to our delight, but most people just came to the end of the tunnel, and turned around for the return journey.

The end of the tunnel.

We’ll have another shortish drive tomorrow to Mt Hart, about 50km north of the Gibb River Road, a former pastoral property now controlled by the WA Dept of Parks and Wildlife as a conservation park, with the homestead accommodation and campground run by the tour company APT. It has some pretty gorges . . . and a bar and restaurant!

 

August 23:

We had a wonderful time at Mt Hart, an oasis in dry season Kimberley weather. The manager was Bob, who’s there with his wife from Tumbulgum in the Tweed area for a few months. There were only a few other groups in the campground beside the Barker River, with a nice swimming hole right there. As well we drove to some other pools and gorges, having them all to ourselves, which was great.

Cooling off in Annie's Pool.

The DPaW is trying to destock the million-acre property, where it seems nobody made any money out of cattle, as they could fatten them all right, but mustering them out of the mountains and gorges was nigh impossible. Just before we arrived a contractor had managed to muster around 800 and they got trucked off to meatworks. But when we drove to some little gorges we saw some big old scrubber bulls that’ve obviously been hiding out for some time, as well as a family group of a bull, some cows and calves, and there were plenty of cowpats everywhere, so some more destocking is needed.

Reluctantly we left Mt Hart, which has an airstrip right beside the two homesteads and lush garden. Quite a lot of people fly in by light aircraft or helicopter and a very funny sign greets them.

 

We drove the 50km back to the Gibb River Road (only took us 1.5hrs) and went on to the Imintji Store, run by the local Aboriginal community and staffed by young backpackers. We had a real coffee and some freshly-baked muffins, and stocked up with some groceries and frozen bread and meat. Just as we were paying for that, a lad brought a basket of fresh baguettes out from the kitchen. We pounced on them at once, buying all four, especially when we were told that they were made by a French pastrycook.

A bustard out for a stroll on the road.

Imagine, on the Gibb River Road, baguettes that tasted as if they’d just been baked in Paris!  That pastrycook then emerged with a fresh apple pie that another customer was having with coffee. Yumm!

On we went, turning off about 25km later for an 88km, rather gruelling drive to Mornington Wilderness Camp, run by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy. There are two spectacular gorges here for us to visit, yet another bar and restaurant, and camping beside a little creek. We’re looking out at pandanus, paperbarks and ghost gums on the side of the creek.

Staff have warned us that a young female dingo has been seen lurking around the campground, so said we should leave nothing outside . . . such as shoes, books, hats etc as she may take them away. They’ve set a trap for her and will remove her to some other part of the sanctuary, a former cattle station that covers 322,000 hectares. It’s been destocked, allowing the native vegetation to recover and the populations of small mammals and birds to recover.

We’ll stay here three nights, exploring the area, then tackle that vile road back to the Gibb, where we’ll find another interesting place to stay.

August 26:

Dramatic scenery on the way to Mornington.

We left Mornington earlier than expected, but more of that later. We really enjoyed that place, bumping over 24km  of rough road to Dimond Gorge, one of the most beautiful in the Kimberley. On the way back to the camp we called into a swimming spot on the Fitzroy River, which was glorious.

That was when we discovered that our #$**! batteries had gone again so we hightailed it back to camp (where no generators are allowed) and managed to get some plastic bottles full of frozen water to put in the bases of the fridge and freezer to get us through the 

Fabulous Dimond Gorge

night, as we obviously couldn’t keep the truck motor running all night.

Close to the end of the Gibb River Road . .  Pentecost River

At the crack of dawn, literally, we were out of there, and the 88km access road took us almost 3 hours but once we were back on the Gibb, John just kept driving, stopping once at a roadhouse on an Aboriginal community to get fuel, and again for a quick sandwich beside the road.

In all, he drove for nine hours, and we almost covered the rest of the Gibb River Road, arriving at Home Valley station, which has an excellent campground, a bar and restaurant, where we got a powered site for the night.

Today, we set off on the final 30km of rough dirt road, with the bitumen starting about 33km before the road ends. That was when John got out to change the truck’s 4WD wheel hubs . . . and found one of the rear dual wheels had just gone flat, probably pierced by one of the sharp rocks. So he changed it, we tootled along into Kununurra, only about 80km away, saw a tyre bloke and arranged to get a complete new set of rear wheels, as those have done sterling service of 60,000 km around some of Australia’s roughest roads. That will be done once we get our auto-electrics sorted.

The tyre bloke gave John the name and number of a fellow who’s coming to the caravan park tomorrow morning. We’re booked in for at least a week, and the park is glorious!

Our site is under trees, including the distinctive boab of the Kimberley, everything is very lush and green, and we have already soaked in the swimming pool, just a few steps from our site.

One of the first things we did after making sure we had a caravan site was take the truck to a car wash and get rid of the Gibb River Road dust. It came off in great red gushes, a bit like it will leave our clothes when I wash them tomorrow.

We have no regrets about not calling at even more of the Gibb River Road places, because of our battery problem.  We think we’d already seen the highlights of the road, explored some wonderful gorges and were frankly, a bit ‘gorged out’.

Now we’re in Kununurra, there are several tours we’ll take, including a flight south to the Bungle Bungles, landing to do some of the walks ( more gorges!); a day at El Questro (where we had told ourselves we’d spend some time); and a cruise on either Lake Argyle or Lake Kununurra.