Kununurra & Wyndham

19 July 2015
Our next stop is the town of Kununurra is a short journey and once again we decided not to book a Caravan Park, some people had told us to try to get on the Showground here. We pulled up at the side of the Showground to see a big Closed sign! Helen frantically rang a few Caravan Parks, we have to tell them that we have a large caravan and we have been disappointed to not get a plot and this was the same. Everyone was full, but luckily we did find somewhere called Hidden Valley and if we get there in the next 15 minutes we could get a spot. Luckily we were only 5 mins away and arrived to be greeted by two very nice receptionists, one from Salford near Manchester. They had managed to give us two plots enabling us to drive through and position ourselves under some very needed shade. We didn't take up the two spots in the end and the shade was so welcome!
A trip to the nearest supermarket was needed as we had bare cupboards. Richard went off and left Helen to carry on with this BLOG!!
The next day our wedding anniversary, we treated ourselves to a tour around the area. We first went into the Mirrma National Park and did two walks. The views were once again stunning overlooking the town and way beyond. Richard didn't have a hat so the best thing to use was a canvas carrier bag we had in the car...Helen made him wear it! We had heard and seen photographs from other Nomads of an area where the Ord River is in full flow it looks like an old river crossing called the Ivanhoe Crossing but we wouldn't want to take our Ute over it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Ivanhoe Crossing

Another tour around took us out to the Sandalwood Factory, here were learned a little about the area and how they are growing Sandalwood trees by using two other types of host trees from India.... We spoke with another couple and the man wasn't impressed with the television presentation here. Helen bought a few items and off we went to our next touristy thing to The Zebra Gallery. Here, they make and sell Jewellery and artefacts made from the locally mined Zebra rock, this is very unique to the area. As writing I cannot find the photographs of their wonderful cat fish that we fed, so no photos here. We treated ourselves to a well earned Mango smoothie too.

Our next 3 days is in Wyndham it's a relatively short drive, we could have done a trip from Kununurra but for us we wanted to see and stay. On arriving in Wyndham at 11:10 in the morning towing a caravan we were stopped by two very young police officers and Richard had to take a breath test, opposite the giant crocodile in the centre of Wyndham...
Wyndham is still a working port, shipping refined metals, quite small and the jetty was renewed a few years ago which the locals use regularly to fish from.

Wyndham Jetty

We had a fantastic spot on the caravan park next to the oldest Boab tree in the area, these trees are just beautiful, many of them have no leaves or fruit, we soon realised that these ones have hardly any water. By fruit I mean they produce a nut which is inside a shell, some aboriginals carve the outer shell and sell them tourists... we heard about one man called Boab Bob but unfortunately didn't come across him. He seems to be based at Fitzroy Crossing and wanders through the caravan park selling is artwork. But, I digress.. Here in Wyndham is another famous landmark/view we had been told about called 5 Rivers lookout which is called The Bastion and it wasn't disappointing, we were once in awe of the view!

Our spot

Our tree

Our caravan to the right

Five Rivers Lookout

From Wyndham we were able to do some good sight seeing. We drove across the salt plains to find the prison tree which was used by the police officers to hold and rest their charges before getting to Wyndham. Along the way we spotted a sign pointing the way to view some Aboriginal Rockart. We had to do a bit of climbing in very hot sunshine to find this site but it was well worth it!























Prison tree



We were the only people here!

Another trip we wanted to do was a trip out to El Questro, another place we had been told about. It is a wilderness park and Homestead covering over one million acres. I suggest you google it and take a look at their website. We arrived at Emma Gorge information centre and paid our $12 each enabling us to travel through the area. We asked the young lady about Zebedee Springs where we really wanted to visit and yes you can, if you get a move on. 











Beautiful palm trees

 The Springs close at midday to the general public and then the real paying tourist on an organised tour from the Main Homestead can enjoy the springs without the rif-raf. Yes, we did have 20mins in the beautiful, amazing warm water, until a young lady Park Ranger came and asked us to leave.
As we had paid to be in the area we decided to go into the Township where we know there is caravan park, so some research to be done for future visits. Our journey took us over two water crossing we were very wary about the second one and decided to wait and watch someone take their 4wd across, all good! Whilst driving caught sight of what we thought was a Jabiru, so rare to see close up... we turned the Ute round and managed to get a few photographs of it before it walked away looking for his dinner. The caravan park was OK but we didn't like the idea of taking our caravan through the two river crossings and at a cost of $62 per night.

The Jabiru




This driver waited for us to cross the river, very kind

Time wasn't on our side as we really wanted to hike up Emma Gorge and we were approximately 20km away..... we made it in time and decided we could get into the Gorge have a swim and walk out again before it got dark. Our hike into the gorge was hard and if we were mountain goats it would have been a doddle. We could hear the sound of people having a nice time and swimming that encouraged us to get moving..... The sight of the waterhole was awesome.... we soon got organised and into the water.

Emma Gorge, bar and restaurant area



Helen on our climb

We had an amazing time in the waterhole.... so pleased we did the hike. Nearly 4km roundtrip. El Questro is an amazing area and if we managed to win the lotto we would definitely come back here and stay in the exclusive Homestead at $2899 per night!! per room!! OK its all inclusive!!
Next stop Bungle Bungles!!!!

1st stop Lake Argyle W.A.

16 July
Lake Argyle

We left Timber Creek and set off to the Border Control area on the Highway. It seemed to take forever along this stretch of road. We queued up at the Quarantine check point, eventually a nice young man came to talk to us and search through our caravan food store cupboards and fridge. All was fine, thank goodness, we saw about ten carrier bags full of fruit and vegetables laying on the floor near the office, ready to be destroyed.

We set off on our merry way and after about 20mins came to our turn off for Lake Argyle, we hadn't booked anything here so we were hoping to just get something. The scenery was once again just beautiful and we caught a glimpse of the Lake in the distance. We were given a very good spot well away from the main caravan area, we were very happy with it. After a short discussion with the reception staff about when and which Lake Argyle cruise to go on, we decided to book ourselves on the Saturday afternoon sunset one. This is the one where we will get complimentary dips, cheese and biscuits and free alcohol.

The Caravan parks infinity pool....freezing cold



View looking down towards the caravan



One of the Luxury Villas on CP $395 per night sleeps 2



The resorts helicopter

This afternoon we went on a drive to the lookout areas and the Dam that was only a couple of kilometres  away, the views were just beautiful.

The construction of the Ord River Dam was completed in 1971 by the American Dravo Corporation. The dam was officially opened the following year. The dam is 335 metres long, and 98  metres high. The earth-fill only dam wall at Lake Argyle is the most efficient dam in Australia in terms of the ratio of the size of the dam wall to the amount of water stored. The lake was named after the property it partly submerged, Argyle Downs.
In 1996, the spillway wall was raised by 6 metres, which doubled the dam's capacity.
Sediment flowing into the dam caused concerns in the mid-1990s that the dam's capacity could be dramatically reduced. By 2006 continual regeneration of the upper Ord catchment appeared to have reduced the amount of sediment inflow.

Lake Argyle normally has a surface area of about 1,000square kilometres. The storage capacity, to the top of the spillway is 10,763,000 megalitres. The lake filled to capacity in 1973, and the spillway flowed until 1984. Lake Argyle's usual storage volume is 5,797,000 megalitres, making it the largest reservoir in Australia.

Lake Argyle, together with Lake Kununurra, is part of the Ord River Irrigation Scheme. There are currently some 150 square kilometres of farmland under irrigation in the East Kimberly region. The original plan was for dam water to irrigate rice crop for export to China. However these plans were scuttled as waterfowl, particularly magpie, geese ate rice shoots quicker than they could be planted. Other crops are now grown, but Lake Argyle still remains Australia's most under-utilized lake. The experts who built the dam estimated that the lake would take approximately 8 years to fill, but after two good wet seasons it was full!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We visited the Durack homestead this was the home of the pioneers that discovered and worked the land known as Argyle Downs.

The magnificent homestead was originally built in 1895 by the Durack family on Argyle Downs Station (now mostly submerged by the lake). The famous pioneering Durack family home became known far and wide as one of the social gathering places of the East Kimberley.
Constructed of handcrafted limestone blocks with crushed termites mounds used as mortar, it was a magnificent building for its time.
During the early 1970’s a decision was made to remove the homestead before Lake Argyle began to fill in order to preserve this magnificent building for all time.
The homestead was dismantled stone by stone with every stone coded in such a way so as to be able to be rebuilt with every stone back in its original position.
The homestead now lives on as a museum dedicated to the pioneering spirit of the Durack Family, about one kilometre from the Caravan Park!

The Durack Homstead

 

Some of the families Headstones in the
grounds of the Museum

Some photographs of our Lake Argyle cruise
Our Saturday afternoon cruise was very good and we were lucky to have two amazing guides, Tracy and Jack. Tracy was like an encyclopaedia she gave us so much information about the area and the building of the lake and how the lake is used to clean the Pink Diamonds that are mined to the south of here. The Argyle Diamond mine is renowned for producing some of the worlds best Pink Diamonds, we didn't know this... Ben Afleck apparently bought Jennifer Lopez a massive pink diamond from here which cost millions of dollars! The town of Kununurra (where we go next) has a few jewellers stores selling diamond rings of upwards of $65,000. We saw lots of wildlife, many crocs sunning themselves, we fed some amazing fish and saw wallabies on the same sunny area as a crocodile, they didn't seem to be bothered with each other.



An Archer fish

We had an wonderful 3 days at Lake Argyle and would love to go back again one day.
Our next port of call is Kununurra..



Our last stop in NT

Katherine, Mathison and Timber Creek

Monday morning and 90kms south to Katherine, we didn’t fuel up at Pine Creek so we were a little low!! Well we managed to get into Katherine and filled up that cost us $104 we were low! Once here and back on cell phone communications Helen called a few Caravan Parks but no luck for tonight. Eventually she got us into the Big4 which is a little way out of Katherine so we decided to visit the supermarket first and stock up with more supplies. We would buy much as we were heading to Western Australia where there is big quarantine laws and we wouldn’t be able to take many fresh vegetables or fruit.

We parked the caravan and Ute on a large grassy area alongside other caravans and walked over to the Woolworths supermarket. Richard noticed that the BWS liquor store didn’t open until 2 p.m. so suggested we did the food shopping and then eat lunch here and wait until 2. This Woolworths must be the busiest store in the Northern Territory it was worse than the London Tube on a bad day. Not enough staff….Helen made a note that she will email the Woolworths CEO and give him a piece of her mind! We must have queued for an hour to get out with the groceries.

Next stop was the alcohol shop, after a bite to eat we went back into the small shopping mall and saw the queue of people trying to get in for their supplies. We forgot about the policeman asking for our ID and wanting to know where we are going to drink out purchases. Darwin didn’t have the policemen on duty in their alcohol outlets! Whilst buying our supplies a woman called out to Richard, it was Lee and her husband Hedley who we had met back at Tumbling Waters, they were staying at the Big4. We arranged to catch up this evening, if they could find us!

Our pitch at the Big4 was a drive thru site so we didn’t unhitch, it was OK for the night. Lee and Hedley duly found us and we had a couple of hours together, they were leaving in the morning too but heading east to Queensland, really nice people.

Big4 Katherine

 

A very busy Big4

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next morning we didn’t go too far just to a free camp called Mathison creek. It took us quite a while to get there as we got stuck behind some Military vehicles their speed being 60kmp. We arrived and got into a fantastic spot with a very nice neighbour. Some more Military vehicles went passed on the highway but some did turn into the rest area. Helen had a lovely conversation with some of the young men, they were all US soldiers and all 5 or 6 of them were from California they had been in Australia arriving in Bunbury then going by ship again up here to Darwin with all their vehicles.



A nice little spot

 

The US army vehicles lots Hummers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Richards favourite, starting a fire

 

 

 

 

 

 

This free camp did get busy but not too bad and all campers in bed early and up and off before 8 the next morning. Of course we don’t get up and off for 8….we are usually 10 a.m. people. Well off we did go and once again encounter more military convoys along the Victoria Highway…

 

 

 

 

Ready to go

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We carried on and decided to stop for the night at Timber Creek where we would use all our onions, capsicums and tomatoes as they would be taken off us at the WA border....Now there is another story! Timber Creek caravan park filled up very quickly, we had some friendly neighbours Neil and Joan and Ian and Sue we had a few drinks with them and it seems we are all heading for WA and Lake Argyle. Our new friends left early but we took our time as we would be gaining one and half hours of time! leaving the caravan park we came across more US soldiers doing a great job of clearing any litter they found, apparently they had volunteered to do this.

Scenery en route to Timber Creek



More US soldiers

On the road to WA

Pine Creek

Pussy Cat Flats Caravan Park

12 and 13 July 2015

After what seemed a short drive down the Kakadu Highway we had decided to stay at a less expensive Campground for two nights called Pussy Cat Flats. We were guided to a spot by Sharon, we had power and water for $24 per night.

Sharon and Roger were Kiwis and had been here in Pine Creek for a long time. They were the caretakers. Sharon was from Invercargill and Richard mentioned the Bert Munroe Museum and the Indian motorbike. Sharon said we would see the fastest Indian later that day. She enlightened us about which Indian it was, there behind us was an old Indian Bike that belong to Roger and he starts it up and rides around the race track every afternoon just before Happy Hour!!!

Richard was in his element, this bike was a 1941 Indian and Roger had bought it when he was 13 years old for 2/6d and obviously took it with him to Australia.

This campground is on an old racetrack and 9 hole golf course it has a covered area with bar and restaurant where they sold reasonably priced food. It was a welcome sight for us as we hadn’t eaten out for a few weeks and thought tonight we would have “fish and chips” of course its Barra! We succeeded in a Facetime session with Jonathan and Kyan. Kyan was so happy to see the playground which was next to our van!

We had a pleasant evening, enjoyed our dinner and decided to head back for an early night as we were the only two people there at 7.30p.m. Sharon was shutting up!

Sunday morning, we had a walk (2 laps) around the racecourse before the sun got too hot, chatted to a few people too. Unfortunately, we didn’t venture into Pine Creek township as we were still hitched up to the caravan. This afternoon we had a drink at Happy Hour and realised that there was a roast dinner being cooked tonight and entertainment for us punters by another Kiwi playing his guitar and singing. We had a lovely roast pork dinner for $15 can’t grumble at that.

 

Monday morning and off this time South to Katherine for supplies.