Pictures – Gladstone (Traralgon on the water) to Victoria return trip.
Our trip south started at around midday once we were all packed up and ready to leave Darwin, south back through Katherine where we noticed the sign announcing that Cadel Evans was born here. Of all the northern towns Katherine had the most number of Aboriginal people just sitting around the city centre under trees. Only another 300ks to our destination of The Daley Waters Pub.
The Daley Water Pubs is in the middle of nowhere or close to it and only 4ks off the Stuart Highway you can find the tiny town that is only a pub and a campground that belongs to the pub. Its an iconic pub and not to many who pass this way who don’t drop on to check it out, like most outback business its employees are mostly backpackers.
This was no ordinary pub its full of crap, crap ranging from bras to shirts, stubby holder and plenty of licences and cash from all over the world is hanging from every inch of this place. We sampled a couple of beers before setting up our penthouse and heading back into the pub for a couple of games of pool and a feed, the camp ground only had around 8 vans and tents but had plenty of room for more, the picture inside the pub showed times of hundreds of vans in the camp grounds.
The feed was ok and I won the pool easy but I didn’t have much competition, only had to beat Shelly and some old grey nomad who was keen to see Shell clean me up. A Greyhound bus pulled into town at around 9:00pm and the locals came from everywhere, this was no small occasion the arrival of the greyhound, it was the biggest thing to happen around here since the last bus came through town. The air breaks of the greyhound made a loud noise at the front door of the pub as it came to a stop just as the barmaid wondered past us with a mail slung over her shoulder like Newman on his mail route around New York.
The driver jumped down three steps from the bus before his work boots hit the warm dirt next to the backpacker mail girl, he opened up the cargo door under the bus and started tossing out all kinds of packages and supplies for the pub and the few locals who had come out to greet him. After they handed out a few parcels to the locals like Santa they swapped mail bags and the greyhound was on its way leaving the locals to open the mail and parcels like 5 year olds on Christmas morning, we had a feed and a few more beers before heading home to the penthouse and a very warm night ahead.
Up early and on our way south we were into our 1000k day to Mount Isa, we made great time with the 130k NT speed limits before we came to the Queensland border marked by a sign full of graffiti and a 1000 head of cattle on the road, with only a couple hundred kilometres to go we were back in our home state for the first time in over 12 months.
As we passed the 60ks to Mount Isa sign the Prado failed for the first time since we purchased it new 6 years ago, we had ran out of fuel, all power had gone from the vehicle, then it came back before leaving us again, we can’t be out of fuel the gauge shows 40 litres remaining plenty to make it to Isa. Then the power drained out of my foot on the accelerator, out of the motor and out of the wheels…
Not knowing much about cars we checked out the basics and tried to start it again but this Toyota that had been so good for so long gave us nothing as did our phones, stranded with no phone service in 42c heat of the outback isn’t great. Shelly jumped on top of car to find phone service and rang the RAC who organised a tow truck to come and collect us. The wait was hot but not so uncomfortable and as we finished the last of out very cold beers in the fridge the tow truck appeared in front of us. It was near dark by the time we checked into the Bourke & Wills Motel in Mount Isa.
The next morning we rode the scooter out to the mechanics to grab some gear out of the car and see if they had done anything yet, the guy who towed us was working on a truck and said he could have a look until he finished with the truck, we grabbed our gear to headed for the Mount Isa Bowl to do something we hadn’t done in many years. We are possible the worst ten pin bowlers of a generation even the guys in wheelchairs using a ramp to roll the balls topped our pathetic scores, after leading for the entire game Shelly lost after the only 3 bowls I got near the pins for the entire game.
Bad news from the mechanic, he found the cause of our sudden power loss but he had no clue how to fix it, come and get your car we can’t help you and we can’t find an Auto Electrician for a week! “You have no power at the relay to the fuel pump” they told me.
I arranged to have it transported whilst Shell hit the phone to find someone who could have a look at the car inside a week, she found someone who could look at it that afternoon if we could get it there now. The tow truck driver had only had his truck a couple of weeks and we were his first tow so it took forever to get it loaded, we made it on time and a young guy was waiting for us but we couldn’t get it under cover until a truck moved out, the same truck as this morning was now stopping us again.
I had a chat to the trucks owner he was from Toowoomba on his way to Kakadu with 6 other trucks to collect a temporary camp and deliver it back to Brisbane, his A/C had packed it in so he spent the day in Mount Isa the same as us, Kakadu is no place to be without an air conditioner I told him. He had never been to the NT so he was keen to hit the road, he told me most of work was for Santos out at Moombah on the SA/Qld border that place get hot but also very cold in the evenings. The trucker made room for our Toyota as he pulled out and headed north after giving me a big smile and a wave.
Peter the young South African guy assigned to check out our car had it running within 10 minutes but my excitement from this was short lived when he tried to drive it where the truck had been in the shade of his shed, whilst it idled well the fuel dried up once he hit the accelerate, we had to push it into the shed not an easy task considering the huge load its carrying.
I left him with it and we agreed to talk in the morning, he would keep working on friday night then come in again on Saturday morning to continue. We hit the Buffs Club across the road for dinner and its 1980s drinks prices. I arrived back at the car around 10am the next day to find Peter and the car in 1000 pieces, he said he had found the fault but couldn’t fix it, “I rang Toyota and they can look at it on Monday for you” he said. He traced the fault down to the fuel tanks and the fuel pump that transfers fuel between the two tanks. I didn’t even know I had two tanks I was told it had one tank of 165 litres when we purchased it.
Being Caulfield Cup day and nothing else to do in the 40c heat we headed to the Mount Isa Races, a race meeting on a sand track with 5 races and fewer horses in each. We got dressed up Mount Isa style and rode the scooter to the track to join the 80 other people silly enough to be out in the heat. With the horses for race 2 parading in the mounting yard we used Shells method for picking winner “that one looks good” so we backed one each and settled in with a cold beer to cheer home our winner.
Race 2 was a 1200 meter race and the horses ran out of sight not long after the start, we had forgot the direction they run and a large shed blocked our view until the first 3 horses appeared again 60 meters for the line, we found a problem with this thou none of the horses were ours! some time later Shells appeared then some later again mine wandered past the shed and into sight, its 42c we can’t punt so we checked out of the Mount Isa races and headed for the comfort and 1980s prices of the Buffs Club.
Monday morning and I helped the truck driver load our Toyota for the third time since Thursday for the short trip to the local Toyota dealer, The guys at CAVA were great and only charged me for the tow and not for the time spent looking at it, I was shocked and grateful for this, if anyone ever needs an auto elec in Mount Isa try these guys first, great service and friendly people who sent me to Toyota knowing it would be my cheapest and quickest option to get back on the road. Maybe we should have just gone to Toyota from the beginning but the original tow truck driver never gave us this option last Thursday night.
We spent the rest of the day doing a Mount Isa pub crawl, Google told us we had eight establishments to drink in so we started with the Barkly on the outskirts of town, the Barkly was a large pub that needed a couple of million in repairs done to it and the bar only had a few locals staring into the bottom of there pots at the bar. By the time we went to the Overlander, the Club, the Isa and the Red Earth we had drank the town dry of its six drinking holes, we searched for the other two but they are long gone and only vacant land exists on the sites.
My phone rang at 5:00pm on Tuesday afternoon with news the car was fixed and ready to go we collected it first thing next morning and packed up to depart Mount Isa, it was a costly stay dropping near $3000 into the local economy and we were very happy to leaving town. Within two days we will be in Tannum Sands with the 3000ks from Darwin complete.
By the time we arrived at Fitzroy Crossing for the second time in a few weeks we were stuffed and ready for bed it had been a great time touring the Kimberley for a couple of weeks but very tiring and once we had the tent setup and had the last of our beers our day was over. The next day we collected our gear that we’d left in storage at Kununara gave the car a wash to get the Kimberley dust out before departing for Darwin.
We spent a night camped at Katharine Gorge, it was ok but we are all gorged out, the drive into Darwin was good with plenty of WWII air strips lining the highway. Darwin has plenty of building going on in the city mostly apartments like all other Australian cities. We booked into the Shady Glenn caravan park 10ks out of town and headed for town on the scooter. We ended up in the Darwin Hotel on Mitchel St talking to guy who runs Flemington Race Course in Melbounre, funny considering we had planed on being here for the Darwin like him but missed it for the Kimberley trip, turns out the Darwin cup was a pretty sad day with a female jockey having a fall and dying before the races were called off.
A couple of days after we arrived Chris played footy in the local masters comp and copped an elbow to the head so we spent 5 hours in Royal Darwin getting 9 stitches above his eye. The next day we ran into Bob and his Winebago in our park, we had last seen him back in Kununara. We then went camping out at Litchfield National Park and the camp ground guy sets up a projector and plays a movie a couple of times a week, tonights film was Death at a Funeral, that was pretty funny and enjoyable sitting out under the stars with a few cold beers among the old grey nomads.
After Litchfield we went to Humpty Doo and had a few beers in the well known Humpty Doo Hotel who had plenty of people getting in the Friday afternoon with a band playing some pretty good music out in the beer garden, we enjoyed it so much that we could drive back to Darwin so we drove a few ks out of Humpty Do and camped out in the wild for the night where we light a big fire and listened to the footy before playing some loud music to keep us entertained.
The Darwin Museum has a display on Cyclone Tracey that is worth checking out, plenty of pictures and a tv report that runs on a loop from the original ABC news reports, they even have a room where you can be in total darkness and hear the sound of Tracey as they were on the night.
We spent plenty of time sitting around the pool at the Darwin Waterfront and for our 25th wedding anniversary we caught the ferry over to the Cox Peninsula here we had lunch looking back at the city from the old Mandorha Pub that closed it doors at the end of September. Cyclone Tracey departed Darwin a long time ago but you can still see the effect in many ways, the buildings in the city are new nothing of any great age to speak of as they were mostly blown away by bombs from the Japanese and Tracey, the twisted power pole at the foreground of our view from the pub, the force to twist metal must have great.
We went on one of many pub crawls that afternoon and ran into some good people, a couple of older guys were on the ferry to the pub and we ran into them again later on Mitchel Street (the pub street) they were brothers from South Australia both farmers ridding their motor bikes around Australia. Walking back to our room at the Hilton we ran into a guy Chris had played footy with 20 years ago in Caloundra, Rohan Gazzard was in town doing a show he is now a hypnotist “The Amazing Gazzard” we went to his show later in the week and had a great time neither of us got up to be hypnotised but enjoyed the show anyway, he puts on a funny show.
Sam and a couple of her friends stopped in for a few hours on their way to Bali so I got to spend a few hours with them on the sunday and again a week later when they had to spend the night in Darwin on the way home.
Chris started his week long footy carnival on a very hot Sunday a day after drinking all day with Ronny Jones and Kevin Rutter from Traralgon watching the Grand Final, not a great preparation for sport in the heat, after getting beaten by Tasmania in the over 45s he kicked a few goals in the 40s who easily beat Vic Metro where he ran into Darryl Mayman on the ground another guy he played footy with years ago. We also caught up with a few guys from the Broome Pearlers and another guy Chris played with in Perth. By the time of his 5th game in 6 days way played he was over footy for a long time. The Northern Territory over 40s won the final against WA so the pain was all worth it, to finish the carnival off we had a great night at the Darwin Convention Centre with over 600 others in attendance.
Over the last couple of weeks the weather had changed dramatically, they call it The Build Up and its easy to see why, you can feel the wet season building up along with the temperature, the humidity and storm clouds build up each day and its tough to get motivated to anything other than hide from it. We got a few good storms that put on a great show and made plenty of noise these storms clear the air and reduce the temperature but this only results in a hotter more humid day the next day. As the build up continues we know its almost time to leave we don’t want to get stuck in the wet season and not be able to cross back over to the east coast and we don’t want to be caught in this extreme weather for the next few months.
We spent a couple of days out at Kakadu National Park thats around 200 ks south east of Darwin, we had lunch at Jabaru before going out to Cahills Crossing thats a road that runs through the East Alligator River and is the border between Kakadu and Anham Land. Its an odd name the East Alligator River when they have a public viewing deck over the crossing where you can see many crocodiles chasing the birds and fish and some times cars as they cross. We went a further 5 ks up the road to the lookout and aboriginal art site, the lookout was packed for sunset and is a bit of an iconic place, its where Mick Dundee pointed out across the vast land and said thats my back yard in the film Crocodile Dundee.
The rock art was good mostly the food they ate turtle, roos and other animals very different to the art we had seen in the Kimberly. We camped close by but it wasn’t the most enjoyable evening, the temp didn’t drop at all from the 40c it had been during the day and with no wind at all it was the most uncomfortable night we had spent in a long time. We went fishing in a couple of spot on the river and had to compete with many crocs but we didn’t land any Barra.
We enjoyed our time in Darwin, I even got to catch up with my Aunty Marianne for a few hours in Darwin before she left for Cairns where she was meeting my dad. Thanks to Kristy and Rene for getting us somewhere to live for the duration of our stay. We are heading east and will be back in Queensland within a couple of days.
We spent a couple of nights at Mitchel Falls that included our first helicopter flight but only after a long 70k bumpy ride from the camp ground to the falls, the helicopter ride was short but worth the $115 to see the falls from the air before being dropped off to explore and walk back. From Mitchel Falls it was a night at Mount Elizabeth Station on the Gibb River Road before the Tassie Toyota of Jim and Maxine failed and Jim decided they needed to dash to Derby for some new front shockers.
It was decided that Windjana Gorge would be our last night together before we headed in different directions, we had to travel 200ks south along the Gibb to cross Napier Range an old reef that was under water 350 million years ago but now looked like a man made wall near Windjana Gorge, we got our first flat on the Gibb here we had done well to only get one as most get many. The Napier Range is around 40 – 50 meters high and similar in appearance to the great china wall in parts, much higher but similar in shape.
Our final night camped under the Napier at Windjana Gorge was shared around a camp fire and another great meal cooked by the chef as the rest of us watched Shell do her stuff. In the morning it was Shelly doing the job and serving up some pretty good pancakes whilst Maxine served up the champagne. A champagne and beer breakfast was a brat way to finish our trip together. Windjana Gorge was ok and the Lennard River was home to many fresh water crocs but it wasTunnel Creek that had us impressed with this part of the Kimberley.
Tunnel Creek is east from Windjana, still part of the Napier Range but not the type of creek we were expecting, Tunnel Creek runs under or through the Napier Range for about 750 meters, its 12 meters high and 15 meters wide, we walk through the tunnel in water and by torch light most of the way. This cave had some smaller caves along the way that we explored that go a long way into the mountain we couldn’t access it all the way as it gets very small or maybe we are just to large right now with our larger holiday bodies.
We walked out of the mild conditions and bats of a 350 millions year old cave to the harsh 40c heat of the Kimberley and said our good byes to the Tasmanians we had spent 2 great weeks together with but it was time for us to head north again, in a few days we will be in Darwin.
Video may not work on smart phone
Its a pretty rough and dusty 200k drive north of Drysdale River Station where you will find the Aboriginal community of Kalumburu, its strange to drive into a town with new buildings and tarred roads when you know your in one of the most remote parts of the country.
Kalumburu on the banks of the King Edward river is the most northern settlement in Western Australia, the first white people to arrive in Kalumburu was 1901 when the first mission was established a bit further north at Pago. Pago is now just ruins since the mission was relocated to its current location in the 1930s, a move that took five years with donkeys and carts. The locals gave the visitors a hostile reception but things settled down with a shotgun being fired before many locals walking in from the bush to see what was going on and joined in the community.
Kimberley is loaded with stone, large stone which was used to build a monastery that still looks as good today as in 1930s. In 1942 Kalumburu became a frontline RAAF base for World War II when the military took over the mission.
From the info supplied by the Kalumburu Aboriginal Corporation
“In the same year (1942) members of the community led by Father Thomas Gil played a major role in the rescue of the 130 survivors from the bombing of the state ship Koolama near the mouth of the King George River.”
“On 27 September 1943 Kalumburu sustained a major assault by Japanese bombers, wreaking havoc and costing six lives including Mission Superior, Father Gil.”
We pulled into the mission store next to the monastery looking to purchase our permit that allows us to be in the aboriginal reserve, other than the lady behind the counter we were the only white people in sight, our skin colour is very dark right now but not quite that of the locals. The mission store lady told us we would need to purchase our permit from the main store next to the centrelink office. Signs all over town remind everyone that Kalumburu is a dry town NO ALCHOL, good for the locals health but we have 10+ cartons between us so not great for us. We drove around the corner and found the place with 50 or 60 locals sitting around doing little in the heat.
After paying for our permit and buying some expensive supplies we headed north to McGowan Island a beach owned but he KAC where you can camp right on the beach, no power, no phone, no internet, no TV and no hot water (it had toilets), its a great place for a holiday. Robert greeted us (if thats what you could call it) he was a tad gruff but we got to choose the best site down on the beach so we were happy. We set up camp and went for a walk along the beach to look for crocs, sharks and oysters on the low tide.
We had a great week at Kalumburu fishing, resting and living in the wild, I even made a spear and went hunting with it, we tossed some fish frames that we got from Frank Albanese from Traralgon in the water to atract fish to spear. We waited patiently for far to long but no fish arrived… until four sharks turned up looking for a feed, 2 sharks were harmless and tried to suck on the fish (we didn’t try to spear them) but a couple of tiger sharks turned up and moved in. Jim speared one of the fish frames out of the water and tied it to a rope before tossing it back in. We didn’t have fishing gear on us to handle a 3 meter tiger shark so the rope seemed a good idea at the time.
Before long the fish frame rope sitting only a few meters in front of us took off quickly in the sharks mouth, I could see the surprise in Jims eyes at how quick it went so I grabbed the rope to help, no chance and a bad choice the tiger shark ran around 10 meters in quick time and my hand had no chance of holding it, all I got was a burn mark on my fingers. The shark spat the bait soon after and took off but gee it was great to feel its amazing force for a few seconds.
A couple of days into our trip we went 7ks north to Honeymoon Bay the only other place you can camp at Kalumburu and hunting for wood for our nightly fire. Honeymoon Bay had a good beach but a poor camp ground so we were happy in our choice back at McGowan Island. On the return trip we collected enough wood for the rest of the week and had a beer to mark the spot, yeah I did say the place allows no alcohol but thats not for everyone is it? We enjoyed more than a carton between the four of us over a couple of hours and it turned out to be a very fun and funny afternoon with Jim and Maxine. The only time we paused was when a vehicle approached us on the dusty track so we hid the evidence and told them we were looking for wood, then continued on drinking when they left, we did see a few of them later that night and knew what we were up to and found it very funny.
On the track back from Honeymoon Bay before we stopped for a beer (I mean collect firewood) on a bend and a dip a large sign says “LIFT’EM FOOT” blonde moment #1455 happened…
It was obvious to the boys in the car (and maybe the other blonde) that “lift’em foot” was aboriginal for “slow down” But Shelly had to ask and and instantly got it before laughing her way through BM #1455.
Fishing at McGowans was great on the first day and ok on the second but after that it was no good, maybe because of all the sharks and the resident croc? But we got plenty of fish given to us by the people with boats who had plenty to share.
We met plenty of interesting people at McGowan Island Lindsay and Marg from Shepparton were funny, I helped her with her computer whilst Lindsay set up his satellite tv and generator before watching every minute of every game for the weekend. Frank Albanese and his wife had traveled much of WA and still only in there early 20s. Mick an older guy from Queensland had a van and boat set up on the beach and he went fishing every day, thats seems normal but Mick had recently had a stroke and his family had tried to put him in a nursing home so he packed up and left for the Kimberley where he’s living a great life in paradise. Mick struggled to get around with any great pass but could manage anything we could, he was cutting wood with one hand and dragging his esky over to his boat before pushing it off and away he went. Another Tasmanian we referred to as Dad because he was of similar appearance to Jim just lots older (turns out he wasn’t much older just looked it) Dad and Mum (Dads wife) joined us a couple of nights around the fire and shared a few stories mum was always enjoying herself NOT, she didn’t smile much as she coughed her way through a packet of smokes.
We spent six nights and could have stayed for six months up the Kimberley’s north, Shelly asked Robert the guy who ran the place for his job but he laughed and told her he’d been here for 29 years and would be here for 20 more. We watched Robert in action one day when he had a heap of locals out staying with him. He tossed his cast net into the water and pulled it out with at least 50 live baits then he and his mates jumped in the boat and went a few hundred meters off our beach, we could hear heaps of noise coming from the boat before they returned with a boat load of fish one was a meter long and half a meter wide that must have weighed in at 30 kilo, we enjoyed some of that mulloway for dinner that night.
Most of the guys who went fishing went far far away, well out of sight of the beach but the local aboriginal dropped anchor just of the beach and cleaned up.
On our way out of town we found the plane wreck from WW2 it was broken into many pieces and the engine was ripped apart but it wasn’t rusting away or anything it didn’t look so bad other than it was ripped in to a few pieces.
What an amazing place it was sad to leave, we are heading back down the dusty and bumpy track for Mitchel Falls.
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.
We drove south out of Derby past the Gibb River Road turn off heading on the much easier Savannah Way and its tarred roads, the Gibb is a dirt cattle route that runs for 600ks between Derby and Kununurra and has only been about since the 70s, Savannah Way is a couple of hundred ks longer but much faster driving on its black top that offers plenty of comfort for us and our scooter hanging off the back of our Toyota. We had talked about doing the Gibb but decided against it for speed and comfort reasons, we are heading for the Darwin Cup on August 5. Who wants to camp on working cattle stations anyway.
After fuelling up at the Willare Roadhouse we had a long days drive east through Fitzroy Crossing and Halls Creek both small towns offering little, just short of Halls Creek we found the turn off to Wolf Creek its famous for a few reason, the first being its the beginning or end of the Tanami Track that runs down through the centre of Australia the second reason most will know as they watched the movie and the third and best is the meteorite crater, a large hole in the earth that’s a kilometre across. We had planned to see the crater but didn’t venture far down the Tanami to protect the cargo from the rough roads.
After 600ks of driving and still 200 short of Kununurra we spent the night at Turkey Creek Aboriginal Community where we had a feed a hot shower and a sleep before we drove deep into the Kimberley and the best view we had seen since leaving, this 200k stretch was just road and rock small rocks big rocks and large mountains made this drive spectacular.
Kununurra is a pretty town on the banks of the Ord river with a hydro power station across it that we drove over to enter the town. We chose a caravan park on the river before leaving them after some bad service and crap site allocation. We checked out the other parks and chose the Ivanhoe Caravan Park which was possibly the best I have seen on this trip, we booked in for two nights and checked the place out. The next day we drove out to the top of the Gibb river road and went to El Questro cattle station thats making a killing from the tourists who visit, the Gibb is surfaced to the front gate of El Questro the is a bumpy 16ks into the station that has plenty of gorges and springs to check out. We went to Zebeede hot springs, its a small slow running water fall that runs through around 30 meters of rock pools and palm trees, the great thing about this place was the water is naturally heated to 32c, we spent half an hour relaxing in the bath.
From Zebedee Springs we went to Emma Gorge that they said will take over an hour to walk into, we cover the journey in 40 minutes to find a large COLD pool with water falling from the amazing Cockburn Range and plenty to look at and enjoy. Emma Gorge was very good as far as gorges go but it will be hard to top those we seen at Karajini.
We arrive home to find new neighbours had moved in beside us and behind but no one was about. Old Bob was the first to arrive fresh out of Gulavers Tavern he told us and we could tell he’d had a few. Bob from Rockingham was driving around WA in a brand new Winabago by himself he was a nice old guy who told a few stories. Our other neighbours arrived back from happy hour at a near by caravan with a few others and we got talking, Jim & Maxine are from Hobart and have traveled Australia as much as anyone we have meet on the road. Jim was on long service leave from his job at Telstra and was heading for the Gibb River Road and Kalumburu.
We packed up the next morning as we kept talking to Jim & Maxine before saying goodbye and heading for Darwin, we had to make a couple of stops for supplies prior to departing Kununurra and I couldnt stop thinking that we should be heading down the Gibb River road (back towards Derby and Broome) I mention it to Shelly and she said no we will be back some day and can do it then, my mind went back to the Darwin Cup for 20 seconds before the Gibb started calling me again.
“We should not bother with the Darwin Cup and do the Gibb with Jim & Maxine”
“Yeah…. but we can do it another time, lets just go to Darwin”
“Nah, lets go and talk to them and see if they want company”
Our planned trip to Darwin and the Darwin Cup is over… we are heading for the Gibb River Road and Kalumburu Aboriginal Reserve for a couple of weeks, no power, no phone service and no internet, check you all in couple of weeks.
*The guy running the camp at Kalumburu has very slow internet via a microwave link.
** No picture because internet to slow to upload (will add later)
After leaving Broome we headed 220ks north to Derby, the first town in the Kimberly, and my place of birth, it also has the highest tidal variation in Australia reaching 11 to12 meters to see this best we headed out to the jetty, you can literally see the tide flowing in. I remember a few times when I was young going out boating and miss the tide and get stuck on a sandbank waiting for the tide to come back in.
Derby’s a small town of about 5000 people, a lot of the population are FIFO to the Islands where they’re mining Iron Ore, there’s a couple of tourist attractions to look at so we got on our scooter and headed out to visit the boab tree prison, its believed to be about 1500 years old. Boabs are hard to tell how old they are because as they get old they become hollow so you cant count their growth ring, this one is 14.7 meters round and is hollow in the middle which allowed it to be used as a prison.
We visited the hospital where I was born all those years ago and where I spent the night after getting flown in from Cockatoo Island when my beautiful sister Sam knocked my two front teeth out for borrowing her tea pot (I didn’t have front teeth for at least a year) I remember waking up in a room full of little aboriginal children with me the only white one, a little scary for a six year old.
We found the old swimming pool where we used to go to the inter school sports with kids from all over the Kimberly the main thing I wanted to do in Derby was find a way to get out to Cockatoo Island so after ringing every air line to try to find someone to actually land on the island and not just fly over it I had to settle for a 2 hour flight over the Buccaneer Archipelago which was pretty amazing. We met at the Derby airport (which is a lot smaller than I remember) at 7.30am for our pre flight check and to put on our life jackets just in case we crashed over the ocean, we took off at 7.45 and headed north to the horizontal falls, the huge tides in the area create the phenomenon known as the horizontal waterfalls its happens when the massive amount of water rushes through the two small gaps in the high cliffs to form the horizontal waterfalls, I remember going there by boat when I was young but I don’t think I really appreciated the magnificence of it all, its amazing the amount of water rushing out of the two bays, there was a few boat cruises down on the water (dad I thought of you while flying over them).
After circling a few times we headed out to Montgomery Reef which is about 420 square ks its best to see it at low tide where you can see the water rushing off the reef the water makes mini waterfalls all over the edge of the reef there’s a cannel that runs though the middle of the reef and there were about 5 cruise boats cruising along, I remember boating around out here and being the only boat for miles now there seems to be charter boats everywhere.
After the reef we headed for Koolan Island as we approached I couldn’t believe how much they had mined the whole top of the island is gone the town ship is no longer there it’s a bit sad really to think back and remember what was, that’s progress as they say. I remember catching the barge over from Cockatoo and having our sports day, we used to live there too but I was to young to remember that. Not far off in the distance we could see another Island and as we approached I hate to say it but I had a tear in my eye its been over thirty years since I was on Cockatoo Island but I remember it
like yesterday we approached from the airport side and flew down past the shiploader the hole in the ground is now huge, we flew over the township I could see the house we used to live in , the fence they put up on the beach to keep the sharks out is no longer there.
We flew around to the back beach and saw the other house we lived in on the cliff, I could see the pool Bondy (Alan Bond) put in at the club when he brought the Island to turn it into a tourist resort, its sad to see its now a ghost town but I’m very glad that we were some of the few who got to experience growing up in such an amazing place the memories will be with me forever.
After waving good bye to one of the best childhoods a kid could ask for we turned around and started heading back we flew over Irvine Island which they tell me might start mining as well, we flew past Strickland bay a place I remember fondly and Sam still has a scare on her finger from Ernie the Eel, past cone bay which now has a huge barramundi farm in it, you can see huge circles just floating in the water these are the sea cages for the barramundi, they produce 1800 tonnes of barramundi per year, we flew past islands we used to camp on as a kid, memories of dad waking us up at 3 or 4 in the morning to catch the out going tide, of being thrown overboard to swim to shore just watch out for the sharks.
Flying back into Derby we flew over the new prison it’s a big square with a few buildings and a great big football oval in the middle this is where Chris is playing footy today he’s playing for the Broome Pearler’s the old boys and their playing against the prisoners I think its just a low security prison lets hope so anyway
All in all it has been a grate trip down memory lane i’m so glad I had the chance to come back and I think next time we might do one of those Kimberly Cruises
Next stop Fitzroy Crossing… now watch this video
After three months we farewelled Broome yesterday and headed north to Derby the birthplace of Shelly. We have enjoyed our time in Broome and the people we have met over the last three months.
CameronCorner 