Yesterday we'd planned to take a drive out to El Qestro but slept too late to do it. We had a swim, took a look around town, then took another swim instead. Wyndham has been the hottest place in WA for the past few days, so the pool is a wonderful spot to pass a couple of hours!
There's not much to look at in town-a spectacular look out that gives great views of the 5 rivers that meet below, some very large Dreamtime statues, a Big Crocodile and the largest Boab in captivity right here in our park. Thank goodness for the pool! We met our former Kununurra neighbours Graham and Ann at the lookout.
Today we managed to get out of bed early and drive out to El Qestro. We'd decided to do a circuit so headed out along the King River Road, taking a short cut over the salt flats to cut a few kilometres out. We'd followed an aboriginal family out of town, overtook them and drove on, calling in to look at Moochalabra dam that supplies Wyndham's water, and then an aboriginal rock art site. When we got to the King River Crossing, a couple of the aboriginal teenagers were fishing and the other three had lit a fire on the rocks and were obviously waiting for a feed of fish. It was a lovely place to spend a few hours.
King River Road then turned into Karunjie Track at the Wyndham Prison tree-these prison trees were used by police as overnight lock-ups mainly for Aboriginal prisoners.
Karunjie track was in better condition than we'd expected-recently graded and good travelling. No real need for a 4WD we reckoned. We passed through a number of gates and noticed a lot of them were new and the fences too. Then we started to see new signs telling us we were on Private Property and shouldn't drive on their salt flats. I opened a gate and noticed two 4WDs coming so waited for them before closing the gate-you get so sick of opening and closing them it's nice when someone does it for you. Anyhow, we both commented on them being hire vehicles.
A bit further on, we saw heaps of cattle trucks, 4WDs, cattle and figured they must be mustering. Then we noticed the horses, cranes and helicopter and figured out just before we saw the sign "Location" that we had stumbled on the very secret (well it is round here) locaton of Nic and Hugh's movie. I'm not star struck, but it has been so hush hush up here it felt like spotting the first whale for the season in Warrnambool!
The moment we past the movie location, the track became just that, a track. It was rocky, rutted, and the ruts were full of bull dust in lots of places.
Karunjie Track
We'd just spent 20 minutes crawling over small boulders like you find in a creek bed when we ran into a SA couple. We stopped for a chat and I was horrified when I asked how much more of this there's be and he answered "30ks". It'd taken them 2 hours to cover the 30ks and I was ready for home, but the boulders stopped and we were left with the rutted, windy rocky track again which was so much better than the creek bed. It was a very beautiful drive with the King and Pentecost rivers often on our right and the Cockburn range always on our left. There were lots of farm dams and lots of birds and cattle-it really was worth the drive.
The Gibb River Road seemed like a highway when we finally arrive there, and although we'd been told the road into El Questro wasn't so good, the grader had just been over it and it was good too. Finally at El Questro round 1ish, we discovered they wanted $15 per head for just being there so turned around and went out again. We figured we have seen plenty of gorges and although they are all different, they'd have to be good to beat the ones in the Bungle Bungle.
Pentecost River Crossing El Questro
Back on the Gibb River Road, we stopped for a latish lunch then called into Tier Gorge and Matteo's Rock. Tier Gorge was supposed to be a good spot for a swim and it was. We were so lucky to be the only one there to enjoy it too.
Tier Gorge
Matteo's Rock was another (very good) Aboriginal Rock Art Site.
Rock Art Matteo's Rock
We got home round 5 and called over to see the SA couple we met out on the road as they wanted to know when we got back, then we had another feed of Barra and chips for dinner for a treat.
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