Well I’ve started my journey eastward along the Savanna Way. So far I’ve clocked up 9200 kms on my wanderings and it will be another 3000 or so to Cairns. I’m not taking the most direct route as I’ll be leaving the A1 just out of Mt Isa when it turns to dirt going north. I’ll be heading eastward along the sealed A5 and whilst I was planning on turning north up to Kurumba, given my latest air con dramas ( see below) I’ve decided to head straight across to Townsville.
On my first day out of Broome I drove 4 hours to Fitzroy Crossing. In order to avoid having to stop in Halls Creek for fuel the next day, I stopped in town to fill up. The town was really desolate – still showing evidence of the floods. The petrol station even had bars around the individual bowsers. I stayed that night in a park on the grounds of a lodge on the eastern side of the Fitzroy river. The crossing itself was pretty straight forward. I then drove straight through Hall’s Creak the next morning – no regrets that I didn’t stop there.
I arrived in Kununurra late morning on Saturday in time for the local markets. Being established to service the Ord river scheme, there’s lots of irrigation and fresh produce here and I’ve enjoyed a couple of really nice meals at the local pub. About 100 kms out of Kununurra the air con in the van decided to go belly up so today I did the ring around and finally found someone to look at it. The official diagnosis was a stone through the condenser, requires a genuine fiat replacement, none in town or Darwin, nearest Fiat dealer south Perth – or for me, the Sunshine Coast where I was planning to get the van serviced anyway. So no air con for the next couple of months. The good news is the temperature has dropped a bit – 28 degrees today and low enough to have all the locals wearing jumpers. My air con man was trying to convince me I’d need the heater not the air con. On a more positive note, my new “ back of house” air con unit works brilliantly.
Yesterday I took another flight, out over the Ord River Scheme, Lake Argyle, the old Durack family homestead and the Argyle diamond mine to the Bungle Bungles. Lake Argyle is about 45km by 65 km and was created in the 60’s by damming the Ord River. It provides water for around 14000 hectares of horticultural land. It’s home to some enormous number of fresh water crocs – I think he said 27,000. I meant to ask what they all eat – tourists??
The Durack homestead was the original one established in the late 1800s following the family’s two year drove with their cattle from Queensland across.
Yesterday’s plane was luxurious. 12 seats for passengers as well as the two pilot seats. There were however 13 passengers so I got upgraded to the co-pilot position. Great seat as, for some reason, they don’t want you touching the controls, so the seat is as far back as it can go, providing heaps of leg room.
We landed at the Bungle Bungles for a short bus trip and then a 5 km wander around. Following the wet season, there’s still a little bit of water lying around. Unfortunately, cane toads have made it out here. Apparently their only predator is a crow – the crows swoop them up and then drop them down onto the rocks where they splatter. The crows take the contents of their stomach but leave the rest. The outcome of this is that there are dead cane toads spreadeagled over rocks and it was quite stinky around some of the water holes.
We had lunch at the Cathedral Gorge, which is where the Qantas ad was made. Beautiful lunch of frittata, quinoa salad and mango chutney served with linen napkins and silver cutlery. Pick your own rock to sit on.
Just after we left the gorge we were passed by a couple of guys, one of whom was carrying a didgeridoo. Our guides both knew this bloke so we sat and waited for 5 minutes until he reached the gorge and started to play. You can just hear him in the background on the next video. There’s a bit of background noise – that was mainly Gabriel, one of our guides who is indigenous, who was commenting on all the missed notes. Gabriel was interesting – trendy, highly articulate and good looking. His grandfather made money working on the northern stations, sent his son to Perth to school, who in turn sent Gabriel. Apparently they live up on the original lands and don’t have much to do with the outside world. Gabriel commented that they were “pedigree’ which I took as a bit of a side swipe at others.
Round about 