No rest for the wicked, our bird alarm clock went off before daybreak.  Holidays or not bills have to be paid (that little plastic card won’t do the trick otherwise).  The internet works a little bit faster before everyone else wakes up.  We had time to catch up necessities like paying bills, washing, cleaning dirty windows on the Karavan & vacuum sealing some of John’s meat.

We booked on a bus & boat cruise with JJJ Tours for a trip down Lake Kununurra (the dammed Ord River).  At 11.30 am the bus picked us up on a 70 km trip to Argyle Dam.  Our driver, Jeff was full of information about plants, animals, history of Kununurra & district, the Ord River & the Argyle Dam.

We had a short lunch break at the Argyle Dam pub & then travelled to the Durack Homestead, which really was 25 kms away, now under the Argyle Dam.  The original stones were used to rebuild the house, the grave stones were replanted too.  The Durack’s are famous because they owned the enormous Argyle property plus some of them wrote the well known books “Kings in Grass Castles” & “Sons in the Saddle” plus “Duracks of Argyle”.  The other famous thing no one seems to think important is that Fanny Durack was the first female Olympic swimming gold winner in 1912.

Into the purpose built cruise boat with twin 350hp V8 Yamaha outboards for the 55km trip back down the river.  Our boat driver, Grant was very informative and a good helmsman.  We had a lot of stops on the way down to look at the wildlife.  We saw a lot of freshwater crocodiles & a large number of different bird species.  The views of the mountains & valleys was again a highlight with the colours changing with the light as we moved downstream.  We stopped for a great afternoon tea lovely pumpkin scones, carrot cake, fruit, juice, coffee & tea at a JJJ Tours camp on the riverbank before heading downstream once more.  The tour boat sat very comfortably at 50km/hr with over 40 people on board.  We stopped a few more times to look at wildlife, including some amazing birds called Jacanas that appear to walk on water.

The final stop was to watch the sunset before we were dropped off at our caravan park on the riverbank. John & Tereza whipped up another great dinner of salmon & salad, which we washed down with a glass or two of red. (yes, we have restocked the supply)  During dinner we were swooped silently by an owl & before dinner we found a couple of tawny frogmouths to add to the wildlife excitement.

This is likely to be the last update for a couple of weeks as we will be travelling the Gibb River Road & will be out of mobile phone coverage.