Carnarvon Gorge

After saying goodbye to Koondoo we joined my family out at Carnarvon Gorge, which gave me the opportunity to actually catch up with them as it was so hectic over the party weekend with so many people. We had dinner in the restaurant both nights, but had a far bigger appetite on the second. We all set out walking up the gorge at the same time but shortly split up as we wanted to go further up the gorge than some. Ben, Jacqui and I set out to walk up to the Cathedral (an almost 20km round trip), I fear that I just slowed them both down considerably but I like to take my time and didn’t want to overdo it. I’m really bad with names but we went up into some caverns up to the right with a charming set of waterfalls and ancient and almost extinct king ferns(?). We got back around 4pm and I was very sore (Ben was fine), but it was worth it!

We had a really great week and a bit with family and friends and it came at just the right time in our trip to give us a little time apart, not that we drive each other crazy but it’s nice to talk to someone else for a change. We almost made a scene saying goodbye (love you mum) but we pulled through and departed for Townsville.

An Extended Weekend in Blackall

Just a quick note on a great week with many friends and family in Blackall and out at Koondoo.

We had an absolute blast. The party was great fun (as was the pre-party and the after-party), catching up with everyone was even better and we can’t wait to see everyone again for another round soon.

Congratulations again Steph and Andy!

Ben's Pub Crawl (ever continuing)

This section was our journey down to Blackall where we stopped at every pub we came across, of course this “pub crawl” is ongoing and I can’t say I don’t like it. We kicked it all off with a dip in the Mataranka hot springs and journeyed out to the homestead, home to the cabin reconstructed for the movie The Never Never, great to have a look at the history and a book I will definitely be picking up once we’re home. Further south we stopped in at Larrimah, home of the ‘big stubby’ and the pub is also known as the Pink Panther Hotel, with some great insignia around the front. The Pink Panther also laid claim to the highest bar in the territory, they even raised the level of the top of the bar to make sure. Daly Waters was our next stop for the afternoon and it has to be seen to be believed, what one could call junk is really more “left behind souvenirs”. We spent over an hour reading and looking about the pub before we headed off down to road to find a camp for the night somewhere down the highway. We rocked on down to Tennant Creek the next day to check out the local attractions and went back up to Three Ways Roadhouse for a beverage and fuel before heading west along the Barkly Highway. We stopped at the Barkly Homestead for another quick beverage and found camp further along closer to the border.

Then back into Queensland!!! We went straight through to Mt Isa where Ben was thankful to wash and vacuum the car. We also stopped at the Buffs Club before heading out of town. We were due to stay at the Ernest Henry mine camp that night so we travelled to Cloncurry and had a quick beer in the favoured local before meeting up with some of Ben’s mates for dinner and drinks at camp. We  had an early start the next morning to get down to Blackall for that afternoon. Ben had planned to visit the Blue Heeler Hotel in Kyuna and the Walkabout Hotel in Mckinlay but unfortunately our early start meant that neither would be open at time of passing. Ben Plans to make this up by a detour on the way home.

Kakadu

Trying to do this catch up really quick so I can post on what we’ve been doing more recently, short but sweet in a few instalments and I will hopefully be able to go into more details and update the posts later on.

By and by we travelled on into Kakadu country, our first stop was at the Window to the Wetlands discovery centre, which gave us a little more ecological background on the area. We travelled on to the Bark Hut Inn where we learned there had been a big accident about an hour up the road, although it didn’t affect our travels too much as we had decided to take a 4WD track through the heart of Kakadu. The 4x4 track led us back out to the highway after a while and we ended up travelling into Jabiru to stay for 2 nights. From Jabiru we based ourselves to go out to Cahill’s Crossing, Ubirr (when Dundee did his thing), Anbangbang and visited Katherine O’Reilly working at the mine camp just out of town. After a couple of days exploring from there we travelled down to Jim Jim and Twin Falls, a good little journey down we stayed the night at the campsite and headed down to the falls the next day. Both of the falls were spectacular and we had a good time exploring. From there we headed out to the highway started to head south, the next part of our journey.

Litchfield to Darwin

From Lake Argyle we headed east into the Northern Territory to Katherine where we grabbed some meat, bread, milk etc. We then turned our attention north on the Stuart Highway and decided to stop not too far from where we’d be turning off the next day for Litchfield at the Emerald Springs roadhouse. The next morning we headed out early tuning towards Daly River to join up at the base of Litchfield on the Reynolds River 4WD track. We had fun going through a couple of river crossings before turning off to have a swim at Surprise Creek Falls, a series of cascading pools, surprisingly deep and satisfyingly cool in the heat of the day. We continued along the track passing some massive termite mounds, so tall that I was still dwarfed when standing on top of the ute. Continuing along we came to a more challenging river crossing which in retrospect we should have really filmed, the river itself wasn’t hard to cross but the soggy muddy escarpment on the northern side would challenge any vehicle without a bit of grunt. After Ben guided a car full of young ladies (I use that term broadly) up the muddy slope in their soccer mum style 4WD, we continued onto Sandy Creek Falls. It was a 2km walk into the falls and they were very beautiful although the pool was quite chilly. From there we finished the Reynolds river track and went down to the lost city, rocky stone pillars that have naturally eroded over time to form a skyscraper like landscape. We decided to go into Bachelor to have a beer and dinner before we headed for some free camping along the highway to Darwin.

We ended up staying pretty close to Darwin and we were in town early to check out the sights. Waiting over an hour at the caravan park to get a site we eventually got set up for a 5 night stay before going for another wander in town and catching up with Chocco, otherwise known as Darryl Whyte (Phill’s dad). Very generously Chocco offered us a place to stay for the remainder of our time in Darwin and we checked out the next morning. After catching up with Chocco we went into the Sunday night mindil beach markets for dinner.

Long story short we spent a relaxing 5 nights in Darwin sampling local fare and generally looking around.

The East Kimberleys

From the end of the Gibb we travelled up to Wyndham just for a look around, we got a few things for lunch from the IGA and travelled up to the five rivers lookout. The five rivers lookout has view of the Pentecost, Ord, King, Durack and Chamberlain rivers all flowing into the Cambridge Gulf, the banks of which are fertile with black enriched soil. After lunch we continued onto Kunanurra where we checked into some luxury, a real bed in a little self contained cabin, before we explored the town. Tanya dragged Ben in to two jewellery shops specialising in the local Argyle diamonds which come in a great variety of shades most notably and expensively the rare pink diamonds, not quite as rare as the ones Tanya liked most; the green diamonds that take their colour from the uranium that  may surround them. Recently there was a story in the news about a super beyond rare diamond that had been found, classified as a purplish red, the first one of its kind and said to fetch a nice price over 10 million, but that’s all hush hush.  We dropped in at coles to get a couple of things most notably fresh bread to have with leftover stew and an early night under a fan in a real bed.

The next day we did the tourist thing looking at the zebra rock galleries, sandalwood gallery and the Hoochery, the rum distillery of the Kimberleys. We went on the Hoochery tour and sampled a few of the rums and liqueurs before having lunch and buying a sample to take home. Afterwards we drove down to Lake Argyle and it was unfortunately dark by the time we got down there but we booked onto a sunset tour for the next day. In the morning we decided to go exploring the area and went down to the dam wall and to the lookouts, the dam wall structure itself is quite fascinating.

Engineering Ingenuity;  The Ord River Dam and Lake Argyle have no spillway instead it has 4 overflows away from the dam wall so that the structure would not be compromised (of which only 1 overflow has ever been used). The dam has a flexible core made of clay as it sits on a fault line that stretches down from Darwin, the clay stays wet from the water collecting on the other side and thus stays flexible and waterproof. It is 95m tall, 315m wide and 305m deep at the widest point, two 4.42m pipes release water back into the Ord river thus providing the irrigation scheme for the farms down the river. Thirty mega-watts of hydro-power is made from the release of water of which even in the heat of summer when everyone has air-conditioning and beer fridges running full time only half gets used. The Argyle diamond mine leases the power produced from the scheme and massive powerlines take it overland to the mine which you can just see beyond the edge of the lake over the curvature of the Earth. The Dam only cost 22 million dollars to build back in the 70’s which even then wasn’t a lot to build such a big structure and most of the rock was sourced from the 4^th overflow right beside the dam. While we visited the dam was at 92% capacity which is equal to over 20 Sydney harbours in volume, of that each year 1m of water off the top of the lake is controlled release into the Ord River and another 2.5m off the top is lost to evaporation. That 1m that is controlled release could supply Perth with its current water usage for 5 years. In the 2010-2011 wet season the overflow had so much water running through it per HOUR it could supply the whole of the 22million people in Australia with the average per person usage of 300L for an entire day. That was just the overflow. When the lake is full it can store up to 52 Sydney harbours of fresh water, and that wet season it got up to the equivalent of 44 Sydney harbours. Also at the height of that wet season the lake rose 1.6m in 24hours, and was 9m over the height of spillway 1 with almost another 2m before it would peak over spillway 2. The freshwater crocodiles can get up to 4m long as it is such a vast amount of water, and there was 35 000 at last count. Lake Argyle is also classed as open water with swells of up to 2.5m in the middle of the lake when there are high winds. From the middle of the lake you cannot see the widest points at the same time as it is so wide the curvature of the earth obscures them. One last item, when they were excavating the rock to build the dam wall they had only 2 blasts the seconds of which was the largest single blast in the southern hemisphere and could be felt as far away as Sydney on seismograph machines.

We learnt most of that on the sunset cruise that afternoon, after trying to go for a swim in the 16.5 degree pool before lunch. The bus down to the boat departed just after 2pm and it was a lovely open boat to make the most of the views. The captain took us to see as many of the far reaches as possible, except of course the south which was a good 40 to 50kms south, where we could see the mountains around the Argyle diamond mine over the curvature of the earth. We saw Euros and Crocodiles as well and enjoyed refreshments at sunset, Ben decided to go for a swim with some of the other brave souls, apparently it wasn’t as bad as the caravan park’s pool but I was too busy taking lots of photos of the sunset.

From Lake Argyle we said goodbye to Western Australia and welcomed ourselves back into the arms of the Northern Territory.



P.S. Photos to emerge sometime soon, sorry for the hold up on blogs :)

The Gibb River Road

We left Derby on the 11^th of July to start the Gibb. Our first camp was at the not too far away Windjana Gorge, we picked a spot and pulled out the swag to claim camp before we continued down to Tunnel Creek. The walk would take us through the creek itself which winds its way through the mountain range, hence the name, we decided to buy some wet shoes for this of which the cheapest option was Volleys, Ben wasn’t too happy with the lack of colour on his so I got decorating to amuse myself in the ute.  Tunnel creek was a great first walk as our introduction to the Kimberley’s, our torch may not have been efficient enough for it but it lent a certain spooky air wading through the cavernous interior. Happily it had a sandy bottom and not too many trips happened in the dark, although there was a strange animal around that kept pinching my backside and stealing kisses. We also got to test out some different settings on my camera so we’ve got some great photos with the limited light or a touch of flash.

We settled back at Windjana for the night and walked up the gorge the next morning. There were so many freshwater crocodiles! At one stage I think we counted about 60 that we could see floating on top of the water and on the banks in the sun, we’ve decided that for every crocodile that we can see there’s at least another one lurking below that we cannot, a very good deterrent of swimmers.

From Windjana we continued up to Silent Grove which is the campsite closest to Bell Gorge (you cannot camp up at the gorge anymore because of wildfire that went through 5 years ago). After setting up camp we drove another 10kms to the Bell Gorge car park and traipsed our way down to the top of the falls. Ben was at once tempted to jump off the top but we decided it would be better to check depths and obstacles from the bottom first. The falls themselves were very beautiful and whilst we were swimming some brave (or foolish) boys decided to jump off the top- but on the other side to where we decided it would be best to jump. Anyway that was it of course Ben had to jump after they had, we walked back up the top together and just before he jumped my camera decided to die so we have no proof! I’ve also decided that the way that Ben jumps around all over the rock bounding from here to there he must be part mountain goat. We got back to camp and had cold showers while each of us took turns preparing curried sausages for dinner. We’ve also been pretty lucky being able to sleep under the stars with the canvas off the swag as the weather has been so warm.

From Silent Grove we travelled along to Galvan’s Gorge which is very easily accessed just off the main road with only a 5 minute walk up to the falls and plunge pool of this very nice little spot. We had the pool to ourselves for almost half an hour which was awesome and it has become Tanya’s Favourite just for the unpopulated, unpretentious and easygoing nature of the gorge. After a good swim we headed off to Mt Barnett Station, the entryway to Manning Gorge, to stay for the night. We had a late lunch and set up camp before heading down to the waterhole behind the campground for a refreshing dip in the late afternoon sun. I was in for a treat with a first class meal of sausages in baked beans with corn on the cob all cooked up by Ben, lucky gal that I am.

The next morning we trekked up to Manning Gorge, a walk that could rival King’s Canyon. It starts with a leaky boat trip or swim (much the same) across the waterhole behind the camp ground and takes you up over rocky outcrops and dry scrubby land to a most beautiful gorge. Well worth the trek, Manning Gorge was breathtaking (and not just because you were climbing over rocks to get there) a beautiful waterfall cascaded into a deep plunge pool, Ben of course jumped off the top. We found hollows behind the falls and shared a kiss behind the wall of water, meanwhile it seemed the rest of the campground had caught up and we were inundated with kids, parents and grandparents alike, so we made our way back with a rewarding swim in the waterhole before continuing our journey.

We turned off the Gibb only a little way on from Mt Barnett station onto Kalumburu road, which had not been graded yet this season, travelling up to Drysdale station where we decided to stay a couple of nights so we could get washing done. Unfortunately there isn’t a heck of a lot to do there so we swam in the local waterhole, with crocodiles we found out later, but it was a good stop over especially for the very welcome hot showers. From Drysdale we continued up to Mitchell Falls plateau, at a very leisurely pace for the corrugations and road conditions weren’t amiable to many vehicles and only declined further down the track, fortunately we only lost one bolt on the battery tray in a place where others had lost or damaged much more. In any case we weaved our way into the campground and had a quick swim in the waterhole at the start of the walk. It was a really lovely swim until unfortunately the peace was shattered by some very energetic kids and they’re frazzled parents descending, although I’m sure it’ll be the same for us someday in the DISTANT future. 

The next morning we started out at about 9am after organising to go on a helicopter flight after our walk, super stoked we headed out. We had been warned that the walk to Mitchell Falls was ten times harder than that at Manning Gorge so we were prepared for a hard slog to the falls, luckily it wasn’t at all the case and we got there quite easily in about an hour, even with a few diversions. We were a little disappointed but pleasantly surprised at this and the walk would probably be on par with the Valley of the Winds walk at the Olga’s, Ah well, never mind. Once Through some beautiful open eucalypt forest and scrubby Spinifex we came out at Little Merten’s Falls that were really charming and similar to Galvan’s gorge. A little further on was Big Merten’s Falls that are just around the corner from Mitchell Falls about a 500 metre walk. I was excited to reach the top of Mitchell Falls as there is a water crossing so I could get my shoes off and cool my feet with joy and a blissful smile. We dropped our shoes and backpack in the shade of some rocks and continued around the corner to get an iconic view of the falls from straight in from of them. We walked back to our things so we could drop yet more gear and go in for a dip in the pools above the falls before a morning tea of leftover damper smothered in jam and fruit (got to be a little healthy). We had another swim before heading back to camp to depart on our helicopter flight! A first for me, we had booked onto a coastal scenic tour that took us over the Mitchell Plateau to the coast. When at the coast we flew around spotting wildlife, brolgas, jabirus, manta rays, sting rays, sharks and of course saltwater crocodiles! It was amazing!!! We had another swim and met another Queensland couple Nicole and Mark who were going in the other direction but it was nice and we invited them to share our campfire that night and we shared theirs the next at Drysdale Station.

We departed Drysdale station on the 19^th of July after saying goodbye to Nicole and Mark and filling up the ute heading back down to the Gibb (where we ironically passed the grader starting the kalumburu road). Arriving at Home Valley we had a couple of beers before checking in and going down to the Pentecost river to camp, Ben wanted to fish but the tides were not in our favour although we did go down for a looksee after dinner hearing barramundi having a feed but not quite being able to spot it with our torch, damn.

Not really wanting to go for a long hot walk in the sun without the promise of a swim at the end we moved on from Home Valley to El Questro where an old workmate from O’Reilly’s, Sarah, has been working for this season. So we were set up very kindly in general camping and went for a walk up telecom hill, another hot and dusty hill that I didn’t really want to walk up, but the views were really nice and we got to see just a parcel of the property which encompasses a million acres (or there about). I did get to have a bit of fun with the attention starved chickens on the way out and back down from the hill; I felt a little worshipped to be honest, just because I could make chicken noises. Ben of course was rolling his eyes and laughing at me, as usual when I get a bit silly. Apparently I’m losing it, though who can really blame me.

We ventured further into the offerings the next day with a soak in Zebedee thermal springs the next morning before a trek through El Questro gorge. It wasn’t too hard a walk although the massive boulders do make it challenging and you need to channel Spiderman at times to get up through tricky sections. The pools are quite refreshing as well, while following Ben along the track we ended up in a sticky spot where Ben thought it hilarious when I slipped into the pool below plunging in over my head, funny but not quite appreciated. Ending at a small set of falls at the end of the gorge the walk was beautiful but it was nice to have a hot shower back at camp before having a couple of drinks at happy hour and retiring to camp to make (very yummy sumptuous steak) dinner as well as have an early night. On Sunday we met Sarah for a walk out to champagne springs, thus named for the slightly bubbled water. It was a relatively easy walk out there going across river beds and swampy marshes before out into Spinifex covered rocky hillside, Spinifex not being too friendly to the legs, arms, really anywhere it can reach. We had also organised to be picked up via helicopter (Sarah’s first time in one) and got out there hours before we were due but it gave us a good opportunity to catch up properly and to explore the area. When we did get on the helicopter we got to see even more of the vastness of this area in the short flight. We had decided to also go out to the restaurant for dinner that night, and it was really good!

Foodie Goodness:  To start Ben had prawn cocktail with spiced seafood sauce, Sarah had Salt and pepper calamari with a chilli lime aioli and I had seared scallops with crisp bacon and a creamy sauce that I cannot for the life of me remember what it was, very yummy. For mains Ben had beef short ribs that had been braised in little creatures pale ale, Sarah had the special of grilled Atlantic salmon with pumpkin risotto and I had Kimberley barramundi grilled with parmesan mash, broccolini and a creamy mustard buerre blanc all washed down with a bottle of pinot gris from the Margaret river. For dessert Sarah had a vanilla panacotta with ice cream that jumped off the plate and Ben and I shared a dark chocolate tart with white chocolate ice cream and strawberries. It was all very yummy.

Monday saw us venturing out onto 4WD tracks to explosion gorge which was unfortunately closed apart from a viewing platform, and to Branco’s lookout and billabong where we had lunch and tried our hand at fishing, to no avail. That night we stoked up a fire and Sarah joined us for dinner with a very nice beef stew and dumplings, all cooked in the camp oven. We also roasted marshmallows and had fun chatting around the fire saying our goodbyes as we were leaving the next day.

It was only half an hour to the end of the Gibb River Road from El Questro and although nice to get back on some bitumen, we believe that so far this part of the country has been our favourite.

More tales to follow shortly, we have many more kilometres of highway to travel. We are looking forward to seeing everyone at Steph and Andy’s engagement party this coming weekend.