Big Travel Day

We had spent the night camped along the Pentecost River not far from the river crossing. There are no bridges on the Gibb River Road but we are here in the dry season so the rivers aren't too deep.

It was peaceful and pretty and while we couldn't actually view the sunset I'm sure it was a beauty. Around these parts the sun was setting by 5.30pm but it was the hour before sunset that had us enthralled. When the sun is low in the sky everything around us took on a perfect orange colour. We took many photos of this over the next few weeks but none of them really captured the beauty.

We watched as a young couple pulled their car over near us and the man went down to the water for a swim. We wondered if he was German. Crocs seem to have a preference to them. Truly, I am not making fun of Germans, but it is common knowledge that more German tourists have been attacked by crocs in Aus than any other nationality.
 
The thing is the Kimberlys are home to thousands of Johnson's Crocodile, usually called Freshwater Crocodiles or Freshies. They are smaller than their mean cousins the Saltwater Crocodile (Salties) and also far more pleasant in nature.
Everyone seems to be a little too blase around here when it comes to crocodiles.

If you ask the locals you always get the exact same reply.
"No salties round here, plenty of Freshies, they won't hurt ya as long as ya keep out of their way. Sometimes we do find a stray salty here and there. Couple'a tourists came across one the other day down there by the crossing, haven't seen him since though. Probably taken off. You can tell the difference anyhow"  

 Tell the difference? I don't want to put myself in the position where I have to 'tell the difference'.
Ever.
And keep out of their way? How do you keep out of the way of a crocodile?
You don't go near the bloody water, that's how.
Do you see what I'm saying?

So we watched this guy swim and not get attacked, he obviously knew how to keep out of their way, or he wasn't German, or he could tell the difference,
We took in the wonder of the world turning orange, heated up tinned beef stew for dinner and went to bed around 7pm vowing to never eat tinned beef stew ever again.

We had got into the habit of going to bed very early and watching a movie on the computer. The whole car setup was almost perfect. We were still getting some dust in the bed area but we solved that by purchasing a cheap set of sheets and covering the bed with them. The bed itself was comfortable. So comfortable we looked forward to climbing in there and hunkering down for the night. Mart was amused that I hunkered, he didn't hunker, he just went to bed.

We woke in the morning to discover another perfect day. Do they have any other sort of weather here? We had a bit of travelling to do today, around 250 klms which doesn't sound too much but this is the Gibb River Road and the going can be slow. We were aiming for My Barnett Roadhouse which is roughly the half way point , there is not a whole lot to see on the way unless you are staying at one of the many homestead camping areas. They have gorges on these properties but you need to be a guest to access them.
If only we had more time.

We were packed up and on the road by 7am (early to bed...... early to rise)

 

 

One of the many river crossing on the Gibb River Road. Because it's late in the dry season none of the crossing were very deep

By 8.30 we were pulled over on the side of the road with our first flat tyre. Not to worry, Mart came prepared with not just one, but two complete puncture repair kits. Just one teensy little problem. The air compressor stopped working. It stopped working so well that it actually deflated the tyre instead of inflating.
Yeah ........ ok ............ what to do.
Well, there's not much you can do.
It's not like you can grab your mobile phone and call RACV, no reception.
You can't start walking to the nearest house and ask for help, that could be miles and miles away.
All you can do is sit and wait until a car comes along at a slow enough speed to be able to see us through the bulldust and then hope they are concerned enough to stop.
I found it surprising that several people did go by without stopping. What ever happened to helping your fellow man?

Did I ever tell you about the time when we were in Kakadu heading up to a place called Jim Jim Falls? That was remote. It was so remote the remoteness was remote. (whatever that means) Well, we chanced upon a family whose car had broken down and the wife was on a satellite phone to the RAVC demanding that they respond to their breakdown call. This is why they paid premium service ! We tried explaining that even if they did respond it would take them 3 days to get here. Mart fixed their car which they didn't seem too happy about, I think they would have preferred to wait 3 days and get their money's worth from the RACV. We ran into them again later in the day on a small boat cruise and they pretended that they didn't know us. I wished that Martin hadn't fixed their car too.
I thought that was a fun story.

Anyhows........... some good people did stop and lend their air compressor and after a 2 hour delay we were on the road again by 10.30am.

Dust kicked up by a passing car. Because there was no wind the bulldust just sat for a long distance. Luckily there weren't too many car that passed.

At 12.45pm Mart uttered something that went a little like this "Oh gosh, oh gee. darn it, we have another silly old puncture. Now aren't we the unlucky ones?"
And sure enough, here we were again, stopped by the side of the road hoping someone would chance by.
A lovely German couple who obviously hadn't been swimming did chance by and lent us their compressor.
Then another couple towing a caravan stopped to see if everything was ok. "we are fine now" Martin explains "However did you know you have a puncture?" The gentleman, Bob, did the whole "oh gosh, oh gee" routine and explained he had just had that tyre fixed.
Well in the end Martin and Bob fixed both tyres, pumped them up and we were on the road once again after another 2 hour delay.
We made it to Barnett Roadhouse only to be told that they had sold their last air compressor but not to worry, we couldn't possibly get another puncture right?

We spent the night at Manning Gorge Camp Area which was our aim however we didn't get to see the actual gorge because we had spent the day goshing and geeing all over the Gibb River Road. It is one of the best gorges we were told but took several hours walking and climbing to get there. Mart was extremely disappointed, I was secretly pleased and whispered a thanks to the tyres.

Our camp site a Manning Gorge. We were there a while before setting up because the hot showers were only available between 4.30 pm and 6pm.
 

We had pork chops for dinner and decided we were definitely right in vowing to never eat tinned beef stew again. And we had a shower.

By the way, did I tell you that Bob, the punctured tyre guy, was a contestant on The Biggest Loser? I don't know how long ago it was but he lost 87 kilos and has not put it back on. He told us it had changed his life and there was no way he could have ever tackled the Gibb River Road with the size he was. Good onya Bob.
I thought that was a nice story.

So a new day dawns and guess what? It's sunny again. Really, wouldn't life be boring if all you had to look forward to were cloudless sunny skies everyday? We were back on the road again by 7.30am.
First stop Galvin's Gorge. Even had a waterfall. And you could swim there though Mart decided not to. Maybe because there was no crowd to cheer him to victory? The walk was lovely and the gorge was pretty. We were pleased as punch.

Galvin's Gorge

 

Imintji Store. The roadhouses along the GRR are mostly situated on cattle stations (ranches). The Imintji Store is situated on Aboriginal Land right in the middle of an Aboriginal community.

We lunched at Iminji Store which is owned by the local Aboriginal Community then headed off to Windjanna which Martin's sister had recommended to us. Oh she was so right to recommend this place. We settled the car in the camping area as this was going to be our home for tonight and headed off towards the gorge.
In all the walks, in all the world, this has to be the best walk I have ever walked. This walk was so great I forgot that I was walking. I'll show you.

The walk to the gorge

First glimpse of Winjana Gorge

One of the residents at the Gorge. There were perhaps 30 in the area

And then to top off the best walk we've ever walked when we turned around to walk back the magical orange hour had begun and made everything so beautiful it was like we were seeing it for the first time.
In case you didn't get my drift ......... this was probably my most favourite place in the Kimberlys.

But all good things have to come to an end and when we returned to our car/camp a guy in the next camp called out to us something that we really didn't want to hear "hey mate, do you know you have a puncture?"
At least there were plenty of people around to lend us a compressor.



Gibb River Road

Today is the day we hit the Gibb River Road but first a little boring background information.
The road was created as a cattle and supply route yonks ago, it is 660 klms (410 miles) long and although it is a major tourist route now it remains at least 90% a dirt and gravel road. It stretches from Kununurra in the east to Derby in the west and is the only access to many of the wonderous sights that can be seen only in the Kimberlys.

It is remote.

It's situated in Australia's far north which means it only has two seasons The Wet and The Dry. During the wet (summer for us in the normal world) The road is pretty much impassable because of flodding besides it's so hot and humid no one wants to be there anyway. So in the dry it becomes a super highway connecting east to west and one of the most travelled dirt roads in Australia.



Before entering the Gibb River Rd we took a pleasant drive to Wyndham that left us wondering why we took a pleasant drive to Wyndham. It did have a spectacular lookout so it wasn't a complete waste of time, and it did have a giant crocodile (made of fibreglass of course) in the main street but other than that if you blinked you missed the township altogether.
We blinked.


lookout in Wyndham. It was hard to get a clear picture because everything was blue and it all blended in together



So after blinking we turned around and headed back to the Gibb River turnoff.



Exciting! This is it! This is what we travelled 5000 klms to see, the famous Gibb River Road, the bone crunching, car destroying gravel track........ and discovered a sealed road. That's ok, that's ok I'm sure they haven't sealed the WHOLE thing.




First glimpse of Gibb River Road

33 klms down a sealed road we approached the turnoff for our 1st destination, El Questro. Most of the land in this area is actually cattle stations. Most of the cattle stations are owned by Aborignals these days but there are still some owned by white man and El Questro is one of them. The place is enormous with many beautiful gorges to explore and the roads aren't sealed so we finally have corrugations and bulldust and the steady pelt of stones hitting the underside of the car. This is what we came for.

By the time we reached the booking office/caravan park/hotel/restaurant we had to seriously consider where we were spending the night. There is no free camping on ElQuestro so $105 later we had secured a private camp site and were bush-bashing our way to it. A pretty site on the banks of the Pentecost River. Money well spent. We watched the sun go down at Pigeon Hole lookout, and spent the longest time, watching by torchlight, a crocodile stalking a water bird. I was barracking for the bird, Martin wanted the croc to win.

The croc never attacked the bird but sandflies attacked me.



Our private camp site

The morning was glorious, blue skies, sun shining and we ate breakfast studying a kangaroo trying desperately to drink from the river while being ever aware that a croc could pounce on him any moment. You can learn a lot by watching an animal's movements. The roo, just like the bird last night, never stayed in any one place for too long, always keeping one step ahead of the crocs. I decide that I will take on this new found knowledge and keep one step ahead of the sandflies.
Sandflies (midgies, noseeums) are smarter than crocs though they aren't as easy to outsmart.

Roo watching out for us

And watching out for Crocs

Today we are going to explore El Questro.
We headed for Chamberlain Gorge, 30 minutes up the road. We were excitied, our 1st gorge on the Gibb River, but you need a boat to actually see the full gorge, and you need to hire the boat from the office about 30 minutes away but don't bother because they are booked out for today.
What?
Why weren't we told this when we were at the office yesterday?
Oh brother .......

So we stood on the small jetty watching people drive off in their little hired boats telling ourselves that we didn't want to see this gorge anyway, even though, from what we could see, it looked very picturesque.

We've got plenty of other things to do.

Chamberlain Gorge ------ as much as we could see of it

Chamberlain Gorge - The other side of the jetty

We headed to Explosion Gorge. Didn't get to see that one either.
We had to cross a mainly dry river bed that was covered completely with large, jagged rocks/bolders, it was slow going and the car was creaking and complaining and I, not Martin, made an executive decision that I didn't want to kill our car just to look at water and a wall of rock .

The road to Explosion Gorge



My driver was not completely onboard with my thinking but I guess he couldn't handle the complaining any longer because he turned around and we headed for our next destination, Jackaroo Waterhole. It was nice and we had lunch there but it wasn't really what we had come to see. 



Jackaroo Waterhole

Our final stop in El Questro was Moonshine Gorge. Just like in the picture books .... crystal clear water, sun-bleached rocks, palms and high, impressive rockwalls.

Moonshine Gorge

Mart took a quick dip in a great looking waterhole. It was a quick dip not because time was against us (which it was) and not because it wasn't hot enough to swim (which it was) but because the water was freezing! Had we read the signboards before heading off we would have read that the water is so cold hyperthermia sets in quickly.
Mart dove into the water, surfaced, turned and started swimming back at lightening speed. I thought he was getting into the Olympic spirit and trying to break the world record for the 100 mts.
I started cheering him on.
I was waving the aussie flag and chanting Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oui, Oui Oui. A crowd gathered and they cheered too.
We sang Land Downunder.

It was a moment, you should have been there.



A quick dip

Luckily only Mart went in because if it had been me I would have shivered and sooked for days. I don't have his 'man of steel' constitution. JG (Jude's giraffe) didn't swim either which is lucky because we all know how bad it is to travel with a giraffe who has a cold.

It was time to leave El Questro, not because there was nothing else to see, in fact we could have spent days there, but because we are on a timetable and the Gibb River Road was calling us.

One of the several river crossing in El Questro

And another one

And then it happened.

It struck on the track out of El Questro without warning. Many an innocent traveller before us have had their cars attacked by this, indeed some may have lost their lives and now we too have become victims of ............ The Killer Rock of the Kimberlys.
You never know when it will strike, it's attack swift and effective. Kicked up by a passing car this killer rock slammed into the bonnet (hood) of our car. Then slowly but with great grace and force, pounded into the windscreen before executing a perfect triple spin with half pike and crashed into the roof of the car. 
And then it was gone.

For a very, very short time I was left speechless.
Where it struck the car was right where my face would have been if I had my face pressed up against the windscreen, which I didn't, luckily.

Really.............. how lucky was that?

I spent and am still spending, a large amount of time reflecting on my near death expeirence. Now I may be inclined to exaggerate a little as to the size of this rock but let me tell you, when I watched, in slow motion, that bolder hurdle towards me I thought that Uluru had come to visit.
It was that big.
After a day or two I had downsized it to one of the Olgas.
Now my thinking is leaning towards one of the Devil's Marbles. I refuse to go any smaller than that.
One good thing about this whole traumatic event was for a small amount of time my bites weren't itchy.

Windscreen damage. This was my view for the next 4 weeks

So as we limped out of El Questro back to the GRR (Gibb River Road) we were at least pleased that the road was now sealed.
For about another 20 meters.
But that's ok, this is what we travelled 10,000 Klms to do.

We were finally on the Gibb River Road.

Our car on the Gibb River Road