Our 6.5hr journey (on tarmac and dirt roads) wasn’t to see a mining town but to visit the Karijini National Park. Recent rains had turned the country green and driving along the red dirt roads we saw thousands of Budgies, Parrots and Finches of all colours and sizes. Our trip into the National Park saw us visit the beautiful Oxer lookout where 3 deep gorges meet. We visited Knox and Joffre lookout before we all set off for a 3km walk up Kalamina Gorge where the girls loved jumping on the rocks and crossing the fresh water streams and waterfalls. The rock formations were beautiful and for those of you who have read the previous blog it was the Stromatolites at Hamlin Pool who are responsible for the rich Iron Ore deposits (and ultimately the strong economy Australia is now experiencing due to mining) as it was the oxygen that they produced which combined with the iron rich sea at the time. After an amazing day we headed back and decided to drive up Western Australia’s highest mountain, Mount Nameless where we got a great view of Rio Tintos Iron Ore Mine.
We stopped off for a night in the mining Town of Port Headland to stock up on supplies and our first real taste of humidity and mosquitos! We stayed at the aptly named Cooke Point Caravan Park (some of the caravans still chained to the ground from the cyclone threat the week before) and had a brief look around the port and the hundreds of ships waiting to be loaded with ore from the huge trains (some which can be up to 600 carriages long). It was here onwards that we noticed the indigenous population starting to increase and along with it fabulous aboriginal art, digeridoos and boomerangs.
Our first tropical thunderstorm in the morning and we hit the road again for 80 Mile Beach. We stopped at Pardoo Roadhouse, the centre of the cyclone and home to a great sausage roll, before turning off the road and up 10km of dirt to the caravan park right on the beach. We weren’t ready for what we found; shells and thousands of them as far as the eye could see and not just small ones but all shapes and sizes! It goes without saying the girls had an amazing afternoon collecting simply beautiful big shells!
Broome was our next stop and we stayed just out of town on Cable Beach for a relaxing couple of days. We invested in a pair of goggles for Daisy who now seems to spend more time under water than above and trolled through the many Pearl shops as this area remains famous mostly for its Pearl diving history as well as its beach. After a busy morning looking round and as the humidity level had started to increase the girls cooled of at a great waterpark next to Town Beach.
One evening we took fish and chips down to Gantheaume Point to watch the sunset and search the shore line for one of the worlds most varied collections of dinosaur footprints some 135 million years old. Our next stop on the way to Kununurra was an overnighter in the small town of Fitzroy Crossing in The Kimberley and we spotted our first Boab tree and many more followed. The Kimberley region itself is bigger than 75% of the world’s countries and the next day we drove 7 hours to Kununurra arriving just in time to set up before it went dark mainly due to the fact that both of the campsites we went to along the way were closed for one reason or another.Luckily the girls coped quite well considering the long day. The landscape in the Kimberley is stunning and really is one of the last unexplored outposts of this vast country.
We had hoped to visit El Questro and stay at Home Valley Homestead ( location for filming the movie Australia) but with the Penticost River still in flood and the National Park opening up later the next week we visited the local Mirima National Park (often refered to as the mini Bungle Bungles) to walk through the Gorges and drove up Kelly’s knob for a view of the area. In the afternoon we visited Valentine Springs after negotiating a creek in flood and visited a nearby rock gallery which has a license to mine the Zebra rock siltstone which is only found in this area. We ended the day at a local rum distillery and Aborigional Art Gallery.
A short trip the next day up the road to Lake Argyle to a caravan park with an amazing infinity pool overlooking the lake and the Kimberley. Lake Argyle, Australia’s second largest was created in 1972 and is big enough to hold 18 Sydney Harbours and provides much needed water to the surrounding area. After crossing the dam and having a look around, noticing that both fresh and Salt water Crocs live in the area Tom went off fishing on the river and caught a small fish; no Barramundi yet!
On our way out the next morning we stopped at Argyle Downs (we were the first visitors for the new season) the homestead of the famous pastoral/pioneering Durack family. The family came out from Ireland in 1853 to avoid starvation and with an inspiring pioneering spirit pushed out from their holding near Sydney and settled in Queensland where no white people had been before farming over 13,000,000 acres between the family before, after a number of droughts, speculated on this distance land in the Kimberley. They set out in 1883 on a journey of over 3000 miles with 7500 head of cattle and reached the River Ord in 1885 with less than half their stock! They settled/claimed a holding of 2,500,000 acres. A truly inspiring family of its time and would urge anyone to pick a copy of ‘Kings in Grass Castles’ by Mary Durack for further reading!
Northern Territory Next stop!
01.04.2012
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