Our Kimberley

We left Broome and headed for the Gibb River Road.... with our caravan!  We heard that Windjana Gorge and Tunnel Creek was not to be missed!  We decided to drive to Lennard River free camp and stay for a couple of days and do a day trip to the gorge.  The road in was a lot worse than what we had planned, it shook the van up quite a lot but all good in the end.  Lennard River was a great little spot to camp, there were a few other vans there as well.



Moon Rise at our Lennard River Camp



Lennard River

Lennard River Camp Spot

The next day we drove out to Windjana Gorge and Tunnel Creek had the roughest road yet, the poor Jeep took a beating but we survived it to enjoy these amazing places!



Windjana Gorge




Windjana Gorge



Weird and crazy Boab Tree at Windjana Gorge



Windjana Gorge



Windjana Gorge



Tunnel Creek



Tunnel Creek



Tunnel Creek

We travelled back to Derby for a couple of nights, we had to fill in a bit of time before our Horizontal Falls trip.  It’s a small place but it had a bike track down to the jetty, so we hopped on our bikes and went for a look, the tides that they experience here are massive with a difference of around 11 metres between low and high tide!



Derby High Tide



Derby Low Tide

Bike Riding Time



We even gave the exercise station a go (its been a long time since we did this!)

It was time to embark on our amazing Horizontal Falls adventure - we were looking forward to this! We were not disappointed, everything from the small plane flight to Talbot Bay to the speed boat trips through the falls to the delicious Barra dinner to the amazing houseboat and checking out the local friendly sharks and Gordy the Groper and the incredible flight back over the Buccaneer Archipelago was just brilliant!

 

I was very excited to be the co pilot although I did white knuckle it at times!

An example of some of the amazing scenery during our flight to the falls!



First sight of the Horizontal Falls



The houseboat where we stayed over!



A friendly local....



Excited Geoff!



Back on the houseboat



This is going through the widest falls.... amazing the amount of water that comes through



This is the narrower falls, you can see the water level is about a 2 metre difference, this was in the morning, we didn't go through this one in the morning, it would have been too tricky!



Horizontal Falls as we were leaving on our flight!




Talbot Bay Sunset



Once we got back from our incredible adventure we continued our journey east, we called into Fitzroy Crossing to get fuel and decided to head out to Geike Gorge, we hopped on a boat tour, what an incredible place!

 

Geiki Gorge



Geoff likes to take photos of me taking photos.....

During our travels along the Great Northern Highway we stayed at some awesome free camps...



Ellendale Lake



Ellendale Lake

Mary Pool



Mary Pool



Mary Pool



Mary Pool

Spring Creek



Spring Creek



Spring Creek

It was time to go to the Bungle Bungles.... gosh this place is almost as iconic as Uluru! We were excited but a bit nervous too as we'd heard plenty of horror stories about the 52 kilometres of gravel road.  We've been on some nasty roads so we were expecting the worst.  We left the van at Spring Creek and packed our camping gear into the car and headed off!! Yep it was a pretty rough road but we were fully prepared so didn't seem so bad, it was very windy, up and down with horrible corrugations, and I counted more than 40 creek crossings (most of them dry) - 6 of them had about 500 - 600mm of water in them. Our first impressions were that it wasn't as bad as what we expected and the Jeep and Geoff handled the road really well!



Bungles Road



One of the water obstacles on the Bungles Road

We stayed at the Walardi Camp, once we set the tent up we headed out to discover this amazing place.  We did the southern walks including the Domes Loop, Cathedral Gorge, Piccaninny Creek Lookout and trek, the Window and Whip Snake Gorge which equalled 4 and a half hours of walking!!  It was wonderful to get amongst the Bungles, great for the soul and made me think how fortunate we are.... this was just breathtaking!  I must admit I was totally worn out by the time we'd finished.... especially my feet!



Piccaninny Creek trek



The Window



Cathedral Gorge



Walardi Camp



This was heaven, I had my feet soaking in cold water after we returned from our walk!

We had a great night, and our earliest night, we were in bed by 7.30pm and asleep by 8pm, it gets dark just after 5pm this side of WA!  Next morning we packed up the tent and drove to the northern area where we did the Echidna Chasm, Homestead Valley walk and the Bloodwoods Lookout!  Another lot of great walks but only about three hours today!



Echidna Chasm



Echidna Chasm



Echidna Chasm - the chasm got very narrow!



Beautiful Palms in Echidna Chasm



Monkey Man at Echidna Chasm

Our Bungle Bungles experience was coming to an end.... we just had to drive back out on that road again!  Wow what a fabulous part of Australia and the park had so much more than what we thought and quite diverse!  Echidna Chasm was absolutely brilliant, the palms up against the red rock was just stunning!

We have made our way to Kununurra and given that water is so plentiful from the Ord River we washed the Jeep and the caravan - no more red dirt!! They look so lovely and clean now.... ready to get dirty all over again!  We will go to Lake Argyle tomorrow where we will spend our last night in Western Australia..... it has been so wonderful to travel through this state - I'm sure that we will reflect on all that we have done here tomorrow night over a glass of bubbles or two.  We will then start our journey east to Queensland via the Northern Territory!

I hope that you enjoy this and my other blogs, I also hope that it may give you all some inspiration to plan a journey yourselves through our magnificent great southern land!!

Cheers
Lyn and Geoff