Timber Creek to Kununurra

Last night I left you on the Madefromhell Highway.
We did make it through with no obvious damage and found ourselves at Timber Creek.


Timber Creeks sole purpose is to service the trillions of holiday makers who pass by every hour. Here you can buy fuel and stay at the caravan park which was a welcome site for us. It had showers ... and ...... and .......... toilets!


I love being out in the middle of nowhere with not a soul in sight. I love our little shower set up. I don't even complain about digging holes for life functions ....... but when you present me with continuous hot water and flushing lavatories I stand to attention and salute modern technology.


To be perfectly honest, the aboved mentioned is all Timber Creek has to offer, but after driving for 562 hours straight it is a welcome sight.


Oh no wait! I forgot to mention that they do have crocodiles. In the billabong about 20 ft from our camp, but they are only Freshwater Crocs. Not the big nasty buggers. Seems Freshwater Crocs(Freshies) are good natured and fun to be around. You can swim with them. Invite them to your next party, have them around for dinner, introduce them to the family, name your children after them.

Say what?

They might not be as aggressive as Saltwater Crocs (Salties) but the are still a wild animal right? So you lose a finger instead of a hand, still going to ruin a holiday.........

Timber Creek also signalled the end of the dusty tracks for a day or two.
We were on our way to Kununurra, not far from the Northern Territory/Western Australia border. It is also the most easterly town in the Kimberlys.

Mart and JG at the border.

The road was sealed and picturesque. I've just quickly added a couple of photos of the sights. I probably have better ones but time is against me.

This is a Black Kite. You see them in the skies everywhere. I am calling them the Sparrows of the Kimberlys.

While searching  for food they can swoop down quite close to your head

We detoured on the way to visit Lake Argyle. A man made lake that services Kununurra as well as providing for agriculture. What a sight! The pictures speak for themselves.

The dam wall, which we drove over just because you can.

Kununurra is a lovely town. I met a sweet Aboriginal Woman who liked to be called Beddy. We sat in the park and she told me about herself. She weaves baskets for a living and it takes up to 3 months to weave and dye just one. She told me she was originally from Arnham Land and she will return there one day, when she is too old to walk.

She liked my fair skin and fair hair and had to touch it several times.. I wish I had a photograph to show you but Aboriginals, especially elders, believe that its highly disrespectful to view a picture of a person that has died so therefore they would prefer never having a picture taken.


We stayed in a caravan park and had prime position over looking the lake.

I was sitting back enjoying the afternoon sun, watching a young woman fish just meters from me when she suddenly reeled her line in and backed away from the water. The look of fear on her face made me look out over the water but I knew what that look meant. There was a croc rapidly moving straight for her .......... straight for me!

Nothing to worry about right? Only a freshie .... or is it? We all know Salties inhabit fresh waterways as well. Am I going to hang around and ask this guy "Are you the dangerous kind?" Should I wait until he gets close enough to check out if he has a thin sleek nose or a broad snout?

We are 6 feet from the water, I'm not hanging around to check his driver's licence..........

We went to bed early that night, safer up there in the back of the ute.


But you know me, I can never resist a sunset. So I risked life and limb (and Martin standing guard) to get a couple of average shots. You would think the sun could have given me a great show to compensate for the danger we put our life's in.... oh well...........

Tomorrow we finally hit the Gibb River Road.

For those who do not know, the Gibb River Road goes for hundreds of miles, 90% of which is gravely, rocky and dusty. There are numerous river crossings (as in: no bridge, you drive through the river) and you do all this to be able to enjoy views of the most beautiful gorges with red cliffs and crystal blue water.

Deby

Uluru to Timber Creek

I haven't written for a week. We have had no reception mostly, other times there just hasn't been the spare hour to write. My life is so complicated.
Where I left you last time was at Uluru, now that was a rock. Girls, no diamond can compare. It's so awesome it's not 'a rock' it's 'THE rock'
By the way, I forgot to mention that little JG bumped his nose on the rock, he's all better now.

Yes, we do get quite a few odd looks from people, it's not every day you see two adults and a toy giraffe going walkabout.
Anyway.........
We left Uluru behind early in the morning and headed for Tennent Creek, Northern Territory. We dropped off for a quick visit to the Alice. I found it surprisingly clean. Why was I surprised? Dunno really, I guess there is so much dust around I expected Alice Springs to be red and dusty too.
I meet a lovely Aboriginal lady in a park. She asked " You wanna take picha of me  lady?" "That would be lovely" I replied "Ten dolla" I was told. I looked at Martin and he is giving me that look. You know the look right? The one that says "walk away,....... don't look back ....... don't get suckered in, she'll only spend it on grog............just keep moving" (it was a long look) so I didn't get the picture but I really, really wanted to give her that ten dolla.


We didn't quite make it to Tennet Creek, spent too long chatting to the locals at Alice I guess but I was glad because we managed to camp overnight at the Devil's Marbles.

 Now, I don't want to be around when the devil decides to play with his marbles because they are big and there are lots of them. Hundreds of them. What a sight. We arrived in late afternoon which we are discovering is the best time of the day for photographers.

 The lighting is amazing, everything is washed with a yellow/orange colour and instantly all around you takes on a serenity.

 How's the serenity?..............

 (I've been waiting ages to say that)

I didn't get much time to take shots because it gets dark at 6.30 on the dot and we wanted to settle in and have dinner.

We were just sitting down to eat when a dingo came into camp to see what he could score from us. He sat quietly watching us eat about 10 feet away and it was so so tempting to throw him a bone but we obey the rules.

 It was lovely having him there, kind of made us feel at home with Mouss and Josie watching and waiting for us to feed them.

We were in bed, fast asleep by 10pm.
By midnight we were both wide awake and felt like we has slept for 8 hours. (this feeling wore off very quickly)
So I say "why don't we just get going?" I know, I know, rocks in the head.
And Martin replies "Let's go then."
And off we went.........
Now, I have heard stories about people experiencing hallucinations while driving the Nullabor. No one told me you can have them on the Stuart Highway. In the middle of the night after 2 hours sleep I was seeing kangaroos, rocks, brickwalls and water on the road. All of which were not there. I decided to keep these visions to myself because I think Martin was battling visions of his own, like talking on the C.B. to no-one. He will deny this but honestly, that is what he was doing. Unless is was just another of my hallucinations.
 When finally I saw 2 men in a telephone box 200 klms from the nearest town I asked if we could please stop and get some sleep.

So after a further 3 hours sleep we were tippy toppy and ready to go. Is a good drive down the Stuart Highway but as boring as watching grass grow. Then out of the blue we come across a little something ...... it's not a town, it just a caravan park really, called Wycliffe. It may be small but Wycliffe is the UFO centre of Australia! Why you ask? Because they say so. They had cartoony pictures everywhere to prove it.

The musuem wasn't open so we missed out on all the good info but Mart and JG got right into the spirit of the place.

At some point we entered the Tropic of Capricorn and it warmed up. Seriously.

So now we are leaving the Stuart Highway and straight way Martin pulls over and we both got changed into shorts. Yes, on the highway. Yes, in the middle of the day. I decided, in the middle of one of my hallucinations, that the Stuart Highway is air conditioned. The whole thing. Just the perfect temperature for travelling.  Now we are one the Buchanan Highway. What clown named it a highway? I wouldn't even call it a road. It's a long, dirty track. And we did the length of it. The people up north look upon us with awe and wonder that we did the whole length. But you tell me why you would want to travel on a sealed highway when you can travel on a dusty, rocky, bumpy, cow infested track that is 200 klms shorter but takes you three hours longer?

We went over one cattle grid at about 3000kph and got airborn. We were flying! My head hit the roof and my sunglasses flew off. Yeeeeeehaaaaaaa!!

I put my seatbelt on after that.

We did see animals

We saw cows

And more cows

And a kagaroo

And several Wedge Tailed Eagles.

This one was enjoying his tucker in the middle of the road

And there were some wonderful views and sights

It was a hard drive for Martin but we enjoyed it.

The last car that attempted the Buchanan Highway.

While travelling long distances you are able to spend quite a large amount of time thinking. Thinking about things that you don't ever get time to think about. Real, indepth thinking.

While travelling along this day I started thinking about eyelids. Do you realize that you blink so fast that it doesn't impede your vision? Have you ever thought about that? Well I have.

 From there I went onto eye strain. Martin and I are both suffering from burning red eyes and at first I thought it to be eye strain. Strain from what? Looking? OK, we are travelling hours and hours every day watching the road and the scenery so maybe you could have eye strain but what do we do any other day? Look right? If we have our eyes open they are looking. So why don't we get eye strain every day?

I'm just saying............

By the way, I decided that it wasn't eye strain. It was frost bite from that cold morning when the water froze. You can get frost bitten eyeballs right?

The end.

New stories coming up very soon

So here we are spending the night at Ayres Rock Resort. It took us 2 &1/4 days to get here, from Melbourne, that's a good effort.

Weather wise is has been slightly less than average, the days are mild but the nights are freezing. We knew it would be cold but come on now .....really......so cold water freezes? That's going to the extreme. We aren't on Mt Kosciusko, we are in the middle of Australia, you know, an area so hot you can actually see the heat right?

Some water dripped from our tap and froze on the way down. Now that is cold!

Jude's giraffe is having a great time. In case you don't know, Jude is our grandson, he belongs to eldest son and wife. They, for some unknown reason, would not allow us to take their 8 mth old baby away with us so we took his giraffe instead.

Jude's giraffe, we call him JG. He has the best seat in the car.
(Yes we have been asked if the giraffe is enjoying himself)

We do need to keep an eye on JG. He really likes to climb trees.

And here's JG taking in the sights of Port Augusta

But it's not all about the little guy.

Today we went to Uluru. Wow. I've never really been a big fan of the rock. So it's a big rock, so it's the biggest rock in the world, it's still just a rock right?

Wrong.

It's a BIG rock, and it's just sitting out there in the middle of Woop Woop, just passing the day. soaking up a bit of sun, lounging around. What's it doing there?  Everyone needs to see this rock and I mean everyone, so why is it still here? Why hasn't anyone moved it to ummmm Sydney or Melbourne so everyone can be as gob-smacked as we were?

So here Martin and I are (and JG) just out for drive to nowhere in particular and one of us glances over and spots Uluru. This picture was taken 120klms away from the rock. I'm telling you, it's huge!

And it changes colour. It's like the biggest mood ring ever.

The following 3 pictures were all taken around 5 minutes apart.

Sunset on Uluru

5 minutes later

And 5 minutes later.

Just awesome.

Tonight we are staying in accomodation at Ayres Rock Resort. After the very cold morning we had Martin was thoughtful enough to get us a room. $260 per night for a sub standard room with bunk beds and no TV. We do have our own bathroom though, we payed extra for that.
We even went out for dinner, a great idea, choose which piece of meat you want, you cook it yourself and they supply the salads.  $30 for lamb chops. And we still have to cook them ourselves. Yeah right, not likely. So instead we had a hamburger each that totaled $34. (yep, that's right..... for 2 hamburgers) but at least they were cooked.

Well I'm off to bed, want to make the most of our room.