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)
CameronCorner 