It took us about an hour and a half to drive the fairly rough 50km track into the Bungles on Sunday night. Very slow, but not as slow as the books and tourist information people would have you believe at three hours. So on Monday, we were ready and raring for the 3 walks and drive back up to Kununurra we had planned.
First up, Echidna Chasm. No echidnas, but the chasm was pretty impressive. Its a short walk, probably better seen in the middle of the day when the sunlight beams down through the steep red rock walls in to the walking track at the base. We spent an hour or so walking between the chasm walls and clambering up over the boulders at the end (where the bats and frogs live).
Then back into Priscilla to speed (well, as far as one can speed on gravel roads at 40 mph) round to the other side of the park to do the Cathedral Gorge Walk, finishing off with the Domes Walk. Setting off at 11am in 35 degree heat is perhaps not ideal planning, but there we were. The walk into Cathedral Gorge was fairly exposed until reaching the final section where the gorge walls finally drew some shade. And the gorge itself was worth the effort, a natural amphitheatre, with a shallow (if now, at the end of the dry season, dank) pool in the centre. We were treated to a little didjeridoo playing by a fellow walker while we were there – perfect to accentuate the natural amplification of said gorge...
The Domes Walk is a much shorter walk through the conical domes of the Bungles – odd shaped red turrets jutting up about you everywhere – most unusual. All very pleasant, if very hot!
After our lovely walks, we headed back out of the park, taking another hour and half to traverse the rocky track back to the highway. Then we made the long drive on bitumen back up to Kununurra, where we caught up with Marg and Chris again that evening to hear about their trip to Mitchell Falls. It sounded wonderful, but the track was undoubtedly horrendous, so we weren't altogether disappointed with our decision not to go with them. We agreed to catch up again in Keep River National Park on the other side of the Northern Territory border in a couple of days time.
On Tuesday we did a tour of the Kununurra/Wydham area. First, we stopped at the Lovell Art Gallery in Kununurra, and enjoyed the artist's panoramic of the Bungle Bungles
http://www.lovellgallery.com.au/panorama/panorama.htm
Her paintings were equally impressive, and we thought about buying a print of one of her boab trees, but with a price tag of $450 for a “limited edition” (“but still not an original”!) print, we opted to keep our dwindling cash. We figure we have plenty of expensive art buying days ahead...
After the art excursion, we crossed the Ivanhoe Crossing and took the dirt track north to Wyndham (well, there was no way I was going back across that crossing, so we had to!) The Ivanhoe is a long concrete crossing, but we'd been warned the river is populated by saltwater crocodiles, and its fairly fast flowing across the concrete, so its a bit of a head thing driving through it. Priscilla was clearly unimpressed with my cowardliness and crossed without breaking a sweat. I, on the other hand, was rather uncomfortable. Here's a picture of someone else crossing before we did!
The dirt track up to Wyndham proved pretty good, and we had a nice stop at the Marlgu Billabong, a wetland area where we watched a darter bird catching fish. The darter (or snake bird) is a striking bird, with a long zigzagged neck, which it can extend like a dart to spear fish on its beak while underwater – good eh? There were lots of lovely lilies too.
And Magpie Geese (which are good eating, so we've been told...)
Then we carried on up to Wyndham and the 5 river look-out, which was surprisingly high, and surprisingly beautiful, but not surprisingly difficult to photograph. So go google it if you want to see what it looks like! Then we shot back down to Kununurra on the highway, before continuing onto Lake Argyle for the night, seeing a lovely moonrise on route.
On Wednesday, we spent an hour enjoying the Lake Argyle campground infinity pool (very nice too, but still not as nice as the one at Hamilton Island where we stayed with Lynne and David!)
before driving down to see the Lake Argyle dam. Lake Argyle was created in the early seventies when the Ord River was dammed as part of the irrigation scheme in the area. It has a surface area of around 1,000 square kilometres and enough water to fill Sydney Harbour 18 times apparently.
Then we slowly headed over the border, well, after some time with our favourite bird, the black cockatoo.
Northern Territory has pretty much no interest in what you bring in, so border control is not even manned on the east-bound side of the road. Those travelling into Western Australia have a much harder time, which meant we received some donations of fruit and vegetables over the next couple of days from people who would otherwise have to bin their uneaten goods before heading further west! The avocado was particularly appreciated!
We spent that night at Keep River National Park, meeting up with Chris and Marg again. The ranger there did a talk that evening. It was titled “Camp Fire Talk, Secrets of the Keep River National Park”. We got the impression he'd had a few drinks and the talk soon became a bit of a rant about government support for the parks etc. All very entertaining.
The next morning we got up and did the short Gurrandalng walk, which was really lovely. The ranger the night before had been very passionate about the park ("where the savannah meets the tropics"), and between rants one thing he said was that this is one of the nicest short walks in Australia, and we think he was at least right about that.
Then we hit the bitumen for 170km to Timber Creek, where we'd been promised cheap camping and a pool (we were now into the hottest temperatures we've experienced on the trip, plus 35 degrees everyday, and getting humid). On route we called at Gregory's Tree, inscribed with the date 2 July 1856, when Augustus Gregory and his party of explorers landed there and set up a base camp to explore the area.
Finally, we (well, Priscilla) climbed a steep climb to get a view of Timber Creek from above, before we headed down to the caravan park. It turned out not to be cheap at all, but there was a lovely cool pool, and at 5pm they had crocodile feeding. Visitors crowd onto a thin and not particularly safe looking bridge to watch a lad from Yorkshire who was working at the park hang bits of meat off a coat-hanger attached to a stick like a fishing rod to feed the crocs. Only freshies, so not meant to be dangerous to us humans, but reasonable size freshies nonetheless. And Jen had a go at feeding them too...(we have a video of this but having trouble uploading...so watch this space).
We had a few drinks with Chris and Marg that night and said our farewells the next morning as they were heading due East while we started heading North for Darwin. We had a longish day in the saddle to make it to Katherine late that afternoon, some 300kms away. We had a little look around town, and picked up some extra food from Coles, before heading out to Low Level Caravan Park just on the edge of town – one of the nicest we've stayed at (well, that was after we'd checked into a horrible one and checked out again!) We stayed two nights to catch up on washing and cleaning, and to have a bit of a laze in the pool and watch a free movie (Mao's Last Dancer) with dinner (chicken schnitzel for Jen and lasagne for me), both of which were pretty terrible, but beggars can't be choosers!
On Sunday we went for a quick look around Katherine Gorge (now Nitmiluk Gorge), thinking we'd call back on our way back South from Darwin. We didn't get a proper look, as we didn't do any of the walks, but we were a bit put off by how developed and touristy it felt. I also think we're now a bit gorged-out. Anyway, we pushed on to Edith Falls for the night, and I (of course) had a swim at the pool at the bottom (saltwater crocodile managed – they don't open it until they've removed any that are there at the beginning of the season, but can't guarantee that one won't turn up during the season!)
Safe to say I didn't swim far from the edge, despite people swimming the full width of the pool (a big one) to the falls on the other side. Early bed, as is usual for us now, ready for the walk up to the main falls in the morning.
That's all for now, still playing catch up, more soon,
Love to all,
Claire, of Jen and Claire Fame
*You should know that, in my head, that's sung to the tune of “Mellow yellow”.
No comments:
Post a Comment