Since changing our minds and turning around we have put some of our gear and the scooter in a Kununurra storage shed then loaded up with enough supplies for two weeks in the wild, plenty of water, cryovaced meat, veggies & XXXX Gold. We left Kununurra for a second time on Friday morning (2nd August) and headed back to the Gibb River Road and the amazing Cockburn Range. The wide surfaced road disappeared just past El Questro Station and our trip down the Gibb was beginning, rough and dusty but we managed to do 80ks an hour on some parts.

We stopped many times to take in the view of the Cockburn Range, the range is huge and looks similar to Monument Valley in the western films with tall sandstone peaks rising up out of the ground only this one is many kilometres across and hundreds around. Fires have been burning in area for a couple of weeks so it wasn’t as clear as could have been but the smoke helped make the sunsets better, we crossed the Pentecost river and turned into Home Valley Cattle Station.

Home Valley (HV8) is a working cattle station with a training facility for the locals and owned by the local Aboriginal people  http://www.homevelley.com with so many people out here travelling around they have converted part of the station into a camp ground with powered sites, toilets and showers (hot) it also has a resort style pool by the large bar dinning area known as the Dusty Bar thats decked out with plenty saddles and other cattle station working tools. We checked in for two nights and spent the rest of the day exploring the station and collecting fire wood.

Jim and Maxine arrive much later than us to join us for dinner before we all headed to the Dusty Bar for the evenings entertainment, Melbourne band The Giants where touring the top half and tonight were on the Home Valley stage playing to loads of old people, locals and us, The Giants were actually pretty good so we had a few beers and enjoyed the night. Jim spotted a guy in the crowd and pointed him out to me, Allan Garner was up dancing to The Giants he was a one man wolf pack. If your not sure who he is check out the picture I got with him and you will sure know him then. We left The Giants and Allan and headed home to get the fire and some music going we had a great night by the fire until near 2am.

We were up early the next morning and went into the bar area to take advantage of the internet on offer, it was the slowest ever and took 20 minutes to put the footy tips on, we gave up on this but did notice Allan getting around the bar area and had a laugh. Shelly grabbed some information on the walking trails and we headed off to one of the local gorges. The gorge wasn’t hard to find wasn’t anything great compared those we had seen but the walk was ok, we did find Allan sitting on a rock and had a chat for 20 minutes, it turns out Allan’s name is Stu and he up from Broome for two weeks to play music at Home Valley each night. Originally from Melbourne Allan (Stu) told us some stories and we couldn’t help but laugh at how much he was like the real Allan.

The walk out nearly killed me (or the late night) so I spent the afternoon snoozing in the tent before we all sat around watching Shelly cook us Indian for dinner complete with Nahn Bread, after such a big night the night before we didn’t go to hard before shutting the night down early, we even missed going to see Allan play in the Dusty Bar.

DR6

Drysdale Station was 250ks away and our destination today, only 200ks along the Gibb then a left turn and head 50ks north up the Kalumburu Road to Drysdale Station (DR6) another working cattle station on 4000 square kilometres, not as pretty as Home Valley but ok with powered sites and hot showers. Shelly and I hit the bar to make sure the beer was ok before our friends arrived they were slower than us and towing a caravan. In the corner of the beer garden was a large fire place that they light up at night so people can get together and have a chat, we joined in once it was dark and had a chat to a few people, one old couple from the east coast (as he put it) were stuck up old farts and they took off quickly.

We had few drinks around the bar fire before having a feed and few more by our fire before calling it a night before our trip north tomorrow to Kalumburu and McGowan Island. A couple of guys that Jim and I got talking to were headed to Kalumburu like us only they would be staying in the town and building houses for the locals. Both lived in Kununurra one of them a the truck driver and mechanic on the trip, the other a Kiwi guy was the chippy and would be staying for a month. The Kiwi told us stories about living in Cape York a place the Jim and Maxine had visited a few times and about McGowan Island where were headed 25ks north of the town out on the beach.