The drugs had worked wonders over
night and I was feeling a lot better in the morning. There are a heap of 4WD
tracks around El Questro so to give my knee as bigger break as possible we
lacked Izzy up, let down her tyres and hit the road.
Our first target was Pigeon Hole and we got to
the look out with consummate ease. The view was pretty good as we had a 360o
view around us. We headed along the track a bit and then doooown to Pigeon
Pool, a natural Billabong on the river. This part of the track was the roughest
we had seen on this trip and I enjoyed the challenge as we rocked and bumped
our way down the rocky track. There were a couple of drop offs that I decided
would be worth a look before crossing them but both ended up to be relatively
easy. At the pool we got the rods out and had a cast and some morning tea.
Luckily we weren’t relying on our fishing skills for morning tea!
We climbed back in and climbed
back up the way we came. Luckily as a young’en my parents had a small farm, a
fair bit of which was the side of a mountain so I had been well prepared. We
motored on and crossed the Pentecost, but at a different spot than on the Gibb.
A few hundred meters up from the crossing is the El Questro Homestead which has
a magic view across the river and to the mountains, but at around $2500/night I
thought they wouldn’t know what to do with me!
We followed the track along to
Branco’s look out, which was even more spectacular than Pigeon Hole and then
back down to Explosion Gorge, named after a dynamite fishing style that used to
be practiced there. We walked down with the rods and lunch and had a great time
trying to catch that elusive barra! Unfortunatley we came back empty handed but
when you are fishing in gorges, rivers and holes as majestic as this it really
doesn’t matter!
It was getting pretty warm so
after lunch we headed back and straight for the swimming hole at the El
Questro. There is a beautiful green grassy area beside the river where they
have created a swimming hole where the water runs out of it over some ‘rapids’.
The boys got their boogie boards and had a ball bouncing down it with De and I
eventually being made to have a go. I am not sure why De choose to go over it
on the tyre tube but it was a doomed mission from the start!
In the afternoon the boys and I
headed up to the stables where we met Chris who kindly offered me a beer and
then taught the boys (and me) how to crack a whip. Jacko was reasonably quick
to get it cracking once he understood that the ‘crack’ of the whip didn’t come
from the whip hitting the ground but rather the ‘cracker’ coming back on its
self. With all of my skill and dexterity I did manage to get it to make some
noise but it was just a bit too hard for Sambo.
Before we going to the stable we
were supposed to be finding out what time the sunset was...so once we realised
it was getting dark we ran back to the van, grabbed De and headed up to
Saddleback lookout to watch the sunset. We probably would have gone closer to
seeing ‘it’ but all of the grey nomads had seen enough and were heading down
the hill for their 5:30pm dinner while we were trying to go up! We got to the
top and enjoyed a beer and a wine as the sun dipped behind the Kimberely Hills.
It was awesome!
The rest of the night was the same
as most of the previous 158 with us having dinner and slipping off to an early nights sleep!
Awesome sunset mate... When I saw el Questro Station in the heading, I thought you must have struck gold and were shacking it up in the homestead! I thought the homestead was the only option there!
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