Day 158 13/5/14 – Roadside stop looking over Pentecost River – El Questro Station WA

The view that we couldn't see in last nights darkenss didn’t disappoint! I woke early slightly uncomfortable with my swollen knee that thankfully hadn’t blown up nearly as much as last time, and took in a magical sunrise.

 Looking east was a massive valley with the Pentecost River running majestically through its centre, 30, 40 or 50m wide at some points. The valley rises abruptly on the other side rising up dramatically into the Cockburn Ranges which have rocky cliffs at their top and are flat on top, enabling you to see the trees growing on the edge. This is worth travelling 20,000kms for!

After breakfast I called my Doc in Bris Vegas and got a script organised for Kununarra and headed for El Questro. There had been mixed reports on what the Pentecost crossing was like but was we drew closer I could see it was going to be a piece of cake. We stopped for the obligatory photos and ploughed into it. A minute later and we were across. It was a bit of an anti-climax as I was hoping for a bit of water, if for nothing more than a couple of good photos!

We rolled into El Questro and De and Sam grabbed the shopping list and drove the 110kms into Kununarra while Jack and I went for a couple of swims and hung around. Around lunch my knee got to the rest my body and I started to break into cold sweats in the van that would have been around 36oC. The next few hours were spent shaking and sweating something out of my system. Late in the afternoon De returned and I dosed up on some heavier drugs and headed for bed. I wasn’t happy that this had happened now but I was pretty happy it wasn’t 3 or 4 days ago when I was literally in the middle of nowhere!

Day 157 12/5/14 – Drysdale River Station – Roadside stop looking over Pentecost River WA

The boys flew out of bed to play with Finn while we took our time to pack up. The only thing on our agenda for today is driving and fishing so we were happy to let them run! Around 10 we headed south back towards the Gibb. We really enjoyed the detour and were so happy that we took to time to do it!

After about 40kms I thought it would be interesting to see what it was like inside the van as we drive down this, some time bone jarring, dirt road. I locked myself in the van, sat on the bed and De rolled on for about 10 minutes. After the first 30 seconds I was in a state of delirium trying to decide how to get out of the van. The van was shaking and pulsating from every angle and I was positive it was going to implode on my. After 45 seconds I was still in a state of mild panic as I hugged the stove top sure it was going to come loose. Another 15 seconds later and reason started to kick in knowing that we had already been of heaps of roads like this and it was highly unlikely that it was going to implode...but the next nine minutes were pretty bloody scarry, especially as unknowingly I managed to choose a section that had ‘red dust corrugations’ the deepest and worst. Mercifully I heard De changing down through the gears brining the rig to a stop. I was out of there quicker than Jack Flash and let another 5PSI out of the tyres in sympathy for Gator!

We pressed on and were excited to get back onto the Gibb. It is around this time we achieved two major milestones. The first was 20,000kms on the trip. Unfortunately as we had no reception I couldn’t look back at the photo I took of our odometer as we rolled out of McEwan St so we took a couple of well educated guesses. The second was all the three’s, but we took it a step further. As the truck rolled over 33,333kms we had lined up the trip meter to be 33.3kms. I also slowed the truck down so we were driving at 33kms/hr and just to top it off I got us to as close to 3333 RPM as possible....The things that amuse small minds on looong drives!

After lunch we unhooked Gator and went bush bashing to a secret fishing spot we had been told about on the Durack River. It was only 7kms it but it took us the best part of ½ hour to get there! It was pretty bloody warm as we scrambled across the rocks that make up a massive river in the wet season to a secluded water fall. I got everybodies rigs ready and as one we started casting. With my second cast I was on to a barra, she put up a meagre fight and was landed with a degree of ease. With photos taken I put her in a puddle behind me as at 60cm I thought I might be able to upgrade her!

The four of us spent the next three hours casting and casting and casting. I had a few chasers and also managed to get a cat fish but other than that it was a very hard slog. Two of the three water bottles were spilt and when I went to check on my catch after an hour or so he had disappeared. I had a quick look but wasn’t too worried as it was virtually impossible for him to escape. Later the boys located him under a rock and I got a stick to chase him out, which I did very successfully. However he had gained enough strength to skim through a gap that must have been 1mm wider than him and back into the falls...oh well! I was quite philosophical as barra are the one creature in this world that I struggle to kill. They are majestic beasts and I feel as if they are (sometimes) left to swim another day.

We were all veeery hot and even more thirsty as we hopped back to the truck and then bashed our way back to the road. While we came out empty handed we had just been fishing in a pretty special spot in an amazing part of Australia.

We rolled on eventually pulling up after dark at a free camp overlooking the Penetecost River. The view would have been magic but it was pitch black so the most magical part about this spot tonight is that we had Telstra reception! After a few phone calls and emails it was time for bed. It was around this time that I noticed that my knee was starting to swell up....It has done this once before in September 2011 so I had an idea what to expect. I took a few neuofren and went to bed knowing that my knee would be like a basketball in the morning!

Day 156 11/5/14 – Drysdale River Station WA

The boys were up, despite their mothers request, at some ungodly hour making more cards and things. Initially we weren’t intending to travel the Gibb and so my plan was to shop in Kununarra but fortunately the boys and I had done some shopping at the Imintji Store – the place all presents are purchased!

After the presents, cards, banners and flowers (handpicked by the boys) were bestowed the festival of the food began. First course was French toast with bacon and maple syrup with a dusting of icing sugar. While I was preparing the boys rode up to ‘the shop’ and bought De another present, a pack of ‘Kimberley Playing Cards’ – every mothers dream gift!

With breaky over, lunch went on the webber, slow roasted lamb shanks, and the boys and I headed down to the river crossing and spent the next hour and a half washing Izzy from top to bottom, inside and out. The water was about 15cm deep, clear and cool and we had a great time...I’ll have to find the nearest river crossing when we get home!

Back at camp Jack, who is the resident damper baker, cooked one up while I got our last frozen vegies on and thickened the gravy. We tucked into lunch, which was pretty damn gourmet considering!

The boys preferred method of travel

In the afternoon we headed down to Miners Pool for a swim and as I waded into my thighs a set of eyes appeared on the other side of the river and then disappeared, while I beat a hasty retreat,! She appeared once more, and while she was a ‘freshie’ she was bigger than 1.5m and I didn’t want to be her mother’s day present. As we turned and walked back she popped her head up straight away, we walked back, she disappeared, we turned....etc; we had a bit of fun playing ‘jack in the box’! We headed back down to the river crossing where we sat in the running water....a much safer option.

For dinner we headed up to the ‘restaurant’ at the station, having a few beers at the bar before hand with some of the locals. Just before dinner a few other campers that we have met along the way arrived and the boys were ecstatic as their latest BFF, Finn was one of them. We managed to keep them in the restaurant long enough to eat dinner and then let them run free! 

We headed back and caught up with Finn’s parents Rob & Cad for a few quities before collapsing into bad after a great mothers day!

Day 155 10/5/14 – Mitchell Falls Campground – Drysdale River Station WA

We knew what lay ahead. 200kms that will take about 3 ½ hours to drive, it isn’t the most exciting thing to wake up to! We packed up and hit the road with a stop along the way, in the muddy puddles, to try and film the fun. 

Once we got back to King Edward River we took the opportunity to visit two other Aboriginal art sites. If I was transfixed yesterday that I was memorised by these two sites. I am far from an arty farty person (sorry to those who are) but I was really amazed by the work. Not just the age of the works but there was something that was beyond words. 

On the way back across the King Edward River I had to cross it three times, the first to drop De and the video of, the second to go back and pick up Jack who had the camera and the third to be filmed by De....luckily all went well. The river had fallen by about 10cm since we first crossed it so it wasn’t quite as much fun!

I sped it up x8 to make it more interesting!

We pressed on and somewhere in the next 30 or 50 kms we crossed a Nissan Patrol heading in the other direction. A quick call on the UHF and we realised it was Logan and Larissa who we have camped with a couple of times. They were supposed to be further up the Plateau so we were really surprised to see them. We pulled off the side and seen it was already 10am (10:05 to be exact) we cracked a coldy and sat by the road and chatted for the next hour! It was a great break for the boys as they ran around with their spears practicing on a few empty tins.

We said our goodbyes again and hit the road finally getting back to Drysdale River for a late lunch. We had moved around a number of things when we packed up to go to Mitchell Falls so I/we took the opportunity to reorganise the storage space in the van and truck. It doesn’t sound very interesting but as you move from place to place you find that you don’t need some things any more. A great example is flippers and snorkels....we have used them a lot until now but my suspicions are that we won’t be needing them very much between here and Brisbane so I stuck them in the most inaccessible corner of the van...yeah!

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day so the boys spent some time in the evening making a few bits and pieces while after dinner I went begging for eggs so we could make De’s favourite breakfast in the morning....luckily I was successful!

Day 154 9/5/14 – King Edward River Campground – Mitchell Falls Campground WA

We had a BIG day in front of us so we were going early, so early that we had to pack down the tent and matresses still covered in due....the due is so thick up here I think you could bottle it! 

We headed off on the last 100kms to Mitchell Falls. The road was in surprisingly good condition, again it wasn’t the M1 but considering where we were I was amazed it was as good as it was! We cruised along at around 50 – 60kms per hour with numerous creek crossings slowing our progress. However much to the boys sheer delight the road the traverses the Mitchell Plateau had a new feature on the road.....massive muddy puddles! They both loved driving through them, and while I did slow down and try to keep one side of Izzy on the dry stuff I was having a ball! We crossed another family heading back and he wasn’t holding back ploughing straight through the centre of every puddle!

2 ½ hours later we had made it, set up our tent and matresses to dry and hit the track. Our first stop was the Little Merhten’s Falls. From the top it looked ok but after finding the track (nothing is sign posted up here) we got to the bottom of the falls where we found a glorious swimming hole. It was pretty warm so we didn’t need too much convincing to take a dip! We had a great time jumping of rocks and I climbed up and sat under the falls, enjoying the sound of the water pounding on my skull!

We headed on across the spinefex covered flats to the next river and hoped along the creek bed to Big Merhten’s Falls. There is no doubt why they call it BIG as the drop is huge with the water falling 40, 50 or 60m straight down where it flows along the base of a deep narrow gorge. While it is an incredible set of falls you can’t get to the bottom of them and I couldn’t scramble far enough around the top of the gorge to enable me be able to see them top to bottom. It was quite unnerving as we needed to hop across a couple of rocks about 3 or 4m from the edge of the falls to follow the track to Mitchell Falls.

By now it was the middle of the day and it was pretty bloody warm. We walked over to the top of Mitchell Falls in the hope of finding a place to have a swim and a bit of shade. While we did find both where we swam was about 30m from the top of the falls that has an incredible amount of water flowing. De and I were the marker boys on the edge of a protected ‘eddy’. Eventually I said ‘this is far from relaxing can we just get out’ and we retreated to have lunch under out postage stamp sized piece of shade.

Mitchell Falls is made up of four (or is it 5) separate falls, with big pool in between each level. The best view of the falls is from a helicopter but at $130/6 minutes/person it was out of our league. The 2^nd best view is from the far side of the falls but as the water was still careening down the river that was also out of the question so we made our own way hoping down the rocks trying to get a decent vantage point. While it wasn’t perfect what we did get to see was pretty amazing.

The view from our swimming hole

On the Edge!

Looking back to the 'Edge' - you can figure out where we were standing!

The 3rd and 4th falls

What the falls look like from a helicopter...courtesy of Logan Walker!

We headed back on the double and had a long swim at Little Merhten’s on the way back. Both of the boys ventured underneath the falls this time as well as having lots of fun exploring under rocks and doing more diving.

On the way back we visited our first major Aboriginal art site. We were all transfixed as we entered the small cave just up from the falls. Here we were standing in front of art that was painted 10, 15 even up to 40,000 years ago and I felt humbled by it beauty.

It was late in the afternoon by the time we returned to camp and after collecting fire wood we relaxed for the remainder of the night having dinner, playing cards and staring at the dancing of the flames.  

Day 153 8/5/14 – Barnett River – King Edward River Campground WA

We had a lot of ground to cover and a few things to do so we were up and at em’ early. We went for a walk down to the nearby falls and the boys had a great time playing ‘paddle pop’ races using leaves as their boats.  

Once back in the van I endeavored to create a dust proof seal around Jack’s window to minimise the amount of dust being spread through the van. I had just managed to finish my magnificent creation when De noticed that one of the latches hadn’t been done up...rather than it being a bad seal.....oh well!

We hit the track and crawled our way back out along the very rough track we came in on last night, passing the contorted Triton on the way out. Below is a snippet of the track...

Back on the Gibb we bounced along in the dirt for another 100 and something kilometres pausing only at the Gibb River Crossing for a pic. 

For the avid followers of the blog you will remember that we weren’t even planning on travelling across the Gibb and that it was only decided at a river side meeting in Windjana Gorge that we should traverse it.

How the boys keep themselves entertained for countless hours!

Doing the Gibb is one thing, but now we were turning off the Gibb and heading north up to the Mitchell Plateau along an even rougher road...... So we turned onto the Kalumburu road and headed north for the 70km trip to Drysdale Station. 

The road still wasn’t miserable but it wasn’t the M1 and the corrugations got deeper and wider and the river crossings became more frequent and deeper...which the boys were very happy about. At each crossing there was a mad dash, with Jack getting his IPod out to film it, to make a river crossings compilation video, and Sam to wind down the window and hang as far out of it as possible in the hope of getting wet!

Once we arrived at Drysdale River Station, that now derives most of its income from tourism, we took Gator and Rufus off and emptied all of the fishing gear etc; out of the back of Izzy, repacking it with our tents and camping gear. Around two we rolled out and headed north again, taking two hours to travel the 100kms to the King Edward River Camp Ground. The road wasn’t that bad with us sitting on 70 – 90kms/hr most of the way. The thing that really slowed us down was the huge number of creek and river crossings, as well as the last 7kms of rocky creek bed that we had to traverse at a crawl.

Topping the tank up at Drysdale River Station...ouch

There are two gates to open at Drysdale River Station so the boys thought they would run it..
The forgot it was about 800m..in bare feet...on a dirt road...had to laugh

The best part of the day was crossing the King Edward River. It was running pretty hard and finally we were going to get something other than our tyres wet..the boys (and me) were excited! We put it into low 4WD and walked our way across the river, with Izzy not missing a beat.

A sample of our day on the Gibb.

De crossing the Drysdale...what a woman and the last crossing is the King Edward River.

After setting up we headed to the river for a swim and a look around. De went investigating and found a waterfall downstream from the crossing. It is incredible how much water flows down these rivers! On the edge of the falls we noticed a large lizard had fallen down into a ‘hole’ about 5 foot deep. Being the greenie that I am I whipped over and pulled a small shrub out lowering it down to him (or her). After a couple of attempts he jumped on and was rescued from certain death..watch out Harry Butler! An interesting side fact that we learnt later is the holes are formed when rocks find their way into small crevices and when the water runs over the top of them the rocks ‘wobble’ around and around gradually wearing away. This hole was pretty big and I wondered how long ago the process started.

About 1km down from the crossing in the video above.

The boys are now very proficient at getting fires going from scratch...well...with matches anyway, so every night we now have a bonfire to sit beside!

We blew up the matresses, climbed into our sleeping bags and went to sleep. Not long after this the local dingos started to howl. It was pretty erie as there were a lot of them, they sounded pretty close and it was the first time we have encountered it. We drifted off to a unique background music

We thought we had been to the middle of nowhere a couple of times....
but this is pretty much on the other side of nowhere

Day 152 7/5/14 –Silent Grove, Bell Gorge – Barnett River WA

Yeah!!! Five months on the road.....but only two months to go....and tomorrow will be ONE month and 29 days.....noooooo!

This is weird as I am writing about today....today. Since we have reached Broome small flying things have invaded out van every night. We have got better at minimising them by leaving the lights off as much as possible, but regularly there are enough in the van by the time we go to bed that you can’t use the computer (to write the blog) or phone as they flock to it, well...like moths to a light. But tonight we didn’t make it to camp until after dark and there isn’t a flying bug inside the van....so i have taken the opportunity to go hard and catch up on the last 10 days!

We didn’t really have a plan other than to get away reasonably early so we packed up and messed around a bit before saying goodbye to out BFF and heading off. I had some work that I needed to get done on the internet and the Imintji store is the only place on the whole 660km Gibb River Road where you can get WIFI. There is NO phone reception the whole way so paying $8/100Mb seemed pretty reasonable. We fuelled up and I parked the rig while De and the boys went to pay and check out the store (that’s pretty exciting stuff around here). I then came up with an idea. Avid readers will have heard me blog (do you hear a blog??) about the boys Co-op, where they sell a few things to get some pocket money. Well their enthusiasm has diminished significantly and I want to lighten the van as much as possible, so I thought this might be a good opportunity to do a sales call....yeah we cleared out all of the remaining torches and a box of crocheads to boot!!

We set ourselves up in the grassy garden beside the store and while I emailed my work of, painfully slowly, De checked he facebook and the boys played some games. Pretty soon the BFF rolled in and we spent the next two hours there chatting. While we were there a lovely middle aged lady, Susan, who lives in Theda (??) which is up near the Mitchell Plateau also stopped for morning tea. She told us all about the road and how wonderful it was up there.....so now we are not only doing the Gibb River Road, we are also going up to Mitchell Falls...bloody awesome!

We rolled down the road a bit further and took a side road into Adcock Gorge. It was reasonably rough on the way it but we had to stop at the river crossing and walk the rest of the way as the trees were getting to close to Gator. I walked ahead and found a magnificent little gorge. As we were walking in another couple were leaving and we had the whole place to ourself. Bell Gorge was amazing but not having to share it with 50 other people made this just as awesome!

We trundled back up the road and De reminded me that I was supposed to send emails to the boys teachers at Imintji....oppps....hmmmm.....so we pulled into the Mt Barnett Road house, the only other establishment for 360km and I managed to talk them into letting me into their office and sending it via the satellite connection...for a couple of bucks! Nice! It did however take about 1 hr to send the two 4 meg emails which put us behind schedule.

We reached the turn off to Barnett River camp just as dusk was approaching. It was only 5kms in so that shouldn’t be a problem. Ahhh...the road was really rough so we slowed to a crawl but we could see a camper set up not too far away. As we got closer we realised it was in the middle of the road. We drove around it and could see why it was sitting there, its chassis had cracked in half! 

I was in 4WD high but seeing that reminded me these things are breakable so I switched down to low and crawled the next very bumpy 3kms into camp. We set up in 2 minutes flat, had a quick dinner and just as we were about to throw the boys into bed we realised that Jack’s window, at the back of the van, wasn’t air tight.....leaving a lovely fine film of red dust across everything, especially his bed