The Kimberlys

It’s been an interesting trip so far. We stayed at an old RAAF quarry a few days ago (which is a really nice spot) and woke up to see the whole place was on fire…

 There were two couples from the Netherlands staying near us and they’d lit a campfire next to some of the Spinifex and the whole lot went up. We had to spend the morning battling the fire which was getting pretty out of control.

 I breathed in so much smoke I’ve been coughing all morning. Its hard work fighting fires, I was breathing really heavily running to get buckets of dirt and rocks from the quarry and then you copping lungs full of smoke when you get to the fire.

 I lost a lot of leg hair as well. We managed to stop the fire though, luckily the wind was going away from the Spinifex tinderbox. It was a close call though.

 

Burnt Campsite at the old Quarry - There definitely wasn't time to get a photo when the fire was going, it was starting to get pretty big though. It was really hot.

The Quarry - 40K's west of Fitzroy Crossing then up 10K's of dirt road on the right, one of the best camp spots we've stayed at (not in the Australia camps book)

So, since Kununurra we’ve headed down to the Bunge Bungle ranges. This is meant to be tough 4wd only dirt road to get into. We stopped at a free camp just across the road and set up the bike, and my god, every grey nomad in the town had to stop and comment about us going in on our crappy dirt bike.

 They really can’t handle anything out of the ordinary, I think it’s boredom that makes them come over really, but after a while you get over all the helpful comments.

 It was pretty easy getting in there in the end, and actually a really fun road, there were about 7 shallow creek crossings which the bike had no problem with, a fairly corrugated road for the most of it, which the bike also handles really well, and heaps of little hills which you could shoot over, it was a heaps fun ride in, and not a terrible road, we’ve definitely been down worse. Definitely not for 2 wheel drives though for sure.

Here’s Rachael at the Bungle Bungle Ranges

Picaninny creek, normally this is an overnight hike, we just went for an hours walk though. It was a really nice walk, there were some cool formations in the rock on the creek bed, and of course the bungle bungle rock formations as well.

Cathedral Gorge, it looks like it would be a great place for a concert. Good luck getting it in there though.

Here’s the entrance to the echidna chasm walk. The chasm is a very narrow crack in the cliffs which goes up for ages. It’s a nice walk to do during the heat of the day

The start of the chasm. It was pretty unnerving walking through the chasm, if a rock had fallen down off the cliff it would have been a pretty serious thing. The cliff was a good 6 stories high, but it was impossible to get a photo showing how high the chasm was in the dark

 

The northern end of the park is a lot different to the south. The south has all the beehive domes, while the north has more of the classic Kimberly range type of stuff which you see through the drive across the top end. The entire highway is amazing, some of the views you get are really incredible.

After the bungles we headed down to Halls creek, and then down to old Halls creek town (which was remade into new Halls Creek due to constant flooding) to camp out for a bit and maybe strike it rich finding some gold.

 This was about 13 K’s of corrugated dirt road which the bus handled fantastically. It even made it down into the riverbed and didn’t get bogged.

 Having four tyres on the back makes a huge difference with traction, we have only bogged the bus once, and that was in my front yard at Coffs Harbour, when it sunk after about 6 days of non-stop rain.

 The riverbed camp (Caroline pool) was a great spot. I only found some fools gold though panning for gold. We got there on a Saturday, and didn’t realise that being a weekend it would be a popular spot with the locals, there were so many Aboriginal kids running around, they were hilarious; they wouldn’t listen to anyone when they called them, and just ran around all day attacking each other. It was a great spot to camp.

 After that we took the bus on some more serious 4wding to the china wall (we were too lazy to take the bike off for a 2Km road)

 Caroline Pool

 

The China Wall & the bus in the background

The China Wall. It went on for ages, but I couldn't get a shot of it all, there were too many trees in the way and when I stood on top of the wall I almost got blown off (It was really windy)

Off road driving

After that we headed to the quarry, where the fire was, and headed another 60K’s up dirt road on the bike to Tunnel creek. This is just like the name describes, a long creek which has tunnelled through the range behind it.

 It was a great walk through pitch black, with cool stalactites hanging down, and some interesting fish, bats and even a fresh water cave crocodile in a hollow up the side of the cave.

 As usual though, it was full of grey nomads! They were EVERYWHERE!!! I couldn’t believe it, I thought we were way off the beaten track.. I found out later that the Gibb river road ends at the turn to tunnel creek, and so a lot of people heading down to Broome head down that way..

 It was a great walk though.

  

Some Stalactites in the Tunnel Creek

 

Inside Tunnel Creek  - As you can see you had to bring a torch to get through to the other side, photos were pretty difficult inside the tunnel but it was pretty cool

Cave Crocodile

 After that we headed pretty much straight over to Derby where we are at the moment. It’s a nice little town, and the town with the highest recorded tides in Australia (a whopping 11 metres). For that reason (along with all the crocodiles) spear fishing is off the cards here.

 We’ll just have to wait until Broome. The marine life around there won’t know what’s coming.

 Old Boab Tree

 

The visibility at Derby. Pristine visibility for Diving and Spearfishing

 

 As far as lemon news is concerned the bus is going great. There haven’t been any problems, which is a first. I’ve learned not to get too complacent though. The poltergeist still hasn't come back in the dash and the wheel hubs don't seem to be getting hot after cleaning all the crap out of the hubs.

 Rachael’s done the budgeting for our trip, and we’ve gone way over budget already. We can’t afford to have any more break downs. Or, at least we can’t afford to go to any more mechanics. Which is probably a good thing considering our track record with mechanics.