Katherine to Mitchell Falls.

Wow!...its been a while since we've had reception and been able to get on the Internet again!



Anyway....the journey continues...


From Katherine it was on to Kununurra



Victoria River.


Stayed a night in between at Limestone Gorge in Gregory National Park. A beautiful Gorge with numerous Boab trees.


The camp area was over 50kms on gravel road, off the 'main road' and when we arrived there was but one space left....but it only had one tree...normally we try 2 find a configuration of three to hang the hammocks...but with a bit of initiative we solved the challenge by using the roof rack side on, as a fixture point, one hammock at each end and the tree for the foot end.Worked brilliantly and we've used this configuration many times since!






Limestone Gorge camp at daybreak.


You see some interesting characters along the road....we were stopped taking photos when a convoy of Farm Tractors towing caravans went past us the other way...in all 8 of them!Who know what pilgrimage they were on!




Stayed 4 nights at Kununurra in the Hidden Valley Camp...which lies directly next to Mirima National Park...Huge rock and sandstone escarpments typical of the Kimberely area.












It was a bit of a fluke we ended up there as we'd been to three other camping areas and they had balked at us having a hammock camp...."We can't have you hanging between the trees!!!"...was the reaction!...so our last hope was the Hidden Valley camp....they reacted totally different....asking questions about how it all works and we could pick any area at the back of the camp where the un powered area was....which suited us down to the ground cause it also gave us privacy.


But camping can mean many things to many people!


Check out this rig...of which there were two in the camp....so big they couldn't fit on a powered site and required major manoeuvring to get into place... 'Luxury' camping????


Can you imagine what a rig like this would cost? and how much it would cost to fuel the vehicle in front to tow it? and guess how many people were in it? two!!!

From Kununurra we did a day trip to Wyndam via the Ivanhoe crossing....

Ivanhoe Crossing.


Many 4wd vehicles pulled up there...thought about it and turned back.The flow was quite strong...But Suzy glided through no worries!




Pelicans waiting for fish to come over the falls.



The view from the window as we crossed...a 'freshie' sunbathing!


Took the 4wd track to Wyndam.

Wyndam is a seaport town that is in decline....Miles and miles of salt plains.There used to be a meat works there.Now most of the old town buildings a boarded up as depicted by Hans posing in front of the former establishment of Lee Tong.


Great lookout over the Port and sea...nice pies at the bakery!...a tacky crocodile statue.


Found a Boab seed that had been carved and broken...at a rest area where we stopped.Probably one you can buy in some tourist shop....patched it back together for a photo.




Went out to the Prison Boab tree....(a shocker of a gravel road...due to corrugations)


In the early days this tree was a temporary 'jail' for aboriginals who had committed crimes.They were held in here till they could be transported to an outer island for rehabilitation.

A bit too claustrophobic for me!

Then 'got lost' by taking a wrong turn at an intersection and ended up travelling right around the Cockburn Ranges (an extra 105 kms of rugged 4wd driving)....so our day trip ended up being a day/nighter!

Kununurra is an interesting town with a strong indigenous 'flavour'.Another town that has bars and gates across all the shop windows and doors.It has a Coles, a great information centre, several camping shops, a couple of banks and several jewellery shops supposedly selling the pink argyle diamond from the famous Argyle mine not far out of Kununurra.

Because w e were camped in an official Camp Ground we were of course not allowed to light a fire....our only source of warmth at night, our usual way of cooking and the atmosphere of a camp at night.

The temperature at night was falling below 5 deg so we were feeling it....

Again Hans came up with a solution! It's the fire you have, when your not having a fire, or as we called it...The Poor Man's Webber! ...but you know it worked really well and we went to bed that night feeling warm instead of having to go to bed feeling cold and trying to warm up....I even wore my fingerless gloves those nights!

'The Poor man's webber!'

A Whistling Kite that had a nest near to our camp.

A Male Bowerbird's bower.

For those not in the know...the male Bowerbird attracts the female by building these 'tunnels' and adorning them with all sorts of pieces found in the area around.In some cases they collect red or green pieces of glass or bottle tops etc. (One Bowerbirds bower it is reported, was found to be adorned with real gold nuggets he had picked up in a gold bearing area from creeks and lying on the ground!)....The female is 'lured' through the bower...they mate...she goes off and builds a nest in a nearby tree and lays and looks after the eggs till they hatch....so its basically lure em in, root em, job done...next one please!

From Kununurra it was onto the next leg of the journey...The Gibb River Road...through to Derby... The Pentacostal River crossing at beginning of the Gibb River Road.

The road to the Mitchell Falls which veers north off the Gibb River Road is for the serious off roaders....no caravans would last this road...

Tanked petrol at Drysdale station...Check out the price!

The last 40kms to the Mitchell Falls National Park camp were atrocious...The corrugations were so far apart (caused by huge off road tour buses) that it we could go no faster than 10kms/per hour.....to go faster would just shake poor Suzy to bits, plus you lost any control of the steering...Larger 4wd's passed us at a greater speed and one in particular passed us at breakneck speed.We saw oil on the road before us after they passed and round a few more bends there he was laying under his car.He'd destroyed his shock absorber....we couldn't help him...he'd have to limp back 100kms to Drysdale station for help.He and his wife weren't going to see Mitchell Falls that trip!

Livistonia palms...typical vegetation on the Mitchell Plateau.

Camped two nights at Mitchell falls camp.....the falls are a 7km round trip walk in from the camp..which we did....and in the heat of around 40 deg...it nearly killed us!...thankfully along the way there were flowing creeks and small waterfalls where we could take a dip to cool down and drink the water.There was a helicopter service from the camp area to the falls and back if you wished to travel that way but it was beyond the budget for us.

Aboriginal paintings found along the track.

But the walk and pain was worth it....Mitchell Falls is spectacular!

The Magnificent Mitchell Falls.

At the top of the falls before it goes over the edge is a fantastic area to swim and revive from the walk....A group of elderly tourists had been flown in and they too wanted to enjoy the cool water.I was particularly concerned for a man whom I estimated to be in his late 80's and who told me he'd recently had a stent put in....I could foresee...fractured neck of femur...heart attack coming his way as he tried to clamber over slippery rocks to get to the deeper part of the water to swim....so I stayed by his side assisting him as he stumbled and slipped over the rocks....then by his side whilst he swam...I'm thinking..."if a rock doesn't damage him the shock of the cold water will!"...see the nurse never really goes off duty!

So now its onto Derby....