Trekkin

It was still dark when I think all the birds turned it on in unison. We were listening in half stupor to the bird symphony when we got a rude awakening by the early bird tourists flying out to see the Bungles.  Time to send off some of our blog – last night we gave up because it was loading so slowly & it was very late.  We spent a couple of hours with the blog & then we went shopping to stock up for our trip across the Gibb River Road.  Kununurra isn’t a very big town but it seems to have everything here – IGA & Coles super markets where we stocked up.

John was lucky he could get a wheel alignment done while Sue mucked around with the computer & did her 5 minutes of house work & they caught up with us at Coles.  Our lunches were lovely fresh salads & fruit (we have been without fresh vegies & fruit for 4 or 5 days).

After lunch for an outing we went to the Zebra Rock Gallery and work shop.  We admired the unusual rock art pieces & we had an interesting time chatting & watching the stone artisans.  The lovely pieces are quite expensive (or very cheap if you think how unique and old they are).

In the late afternoon we caught up with Jason & Michelle Kingma plus their kids Ben, Matt & Amy.  Jason & Michelle both work with me at Telstra in Canberra & are on 4 months long service leave.  They left Canberra around the same time we did & by an extraordinary coincidence we are in Kununurra at the same time.  There may even be an opportunity to catch up further along as they are heading around Australia in the same direction as us.  So tonight we shared cheese & bikkies with the Kingma family, it was lovely to catch up.

The corellas woke us at sunrise.  While we were having our breakfast we watched two of them digging out a hole for nesting while a whole flock of corellas (obviously bachelors) screeched, clowned & flew around or settled on the branches close to the hard working couple (she obviously wanted a decent size home if he expected her to settle down with him).  All this was fun to watch but nomads must move on.  How quickly we forgot the dreadful drive in to the Bungles while we were enjoying the lovely scenery – reality hit hard driving out on that dreadful road but we survived it without any mishap (50 kms in over 2 hours).

The bitumen road was good, the scenery beautiful all the way, we were surrounded by beautiful mountain ranges, dry grass but nice green shrubs/trees & quite a lot of Boab trees.  We stopped at Turkey Creek (Warmun) to have lunch at the road house and visit a contemporary Aboriginal Art Centre.  (We did all the art shopping in Alice Springs & Sue found it hard to refrain from spending her money).

We arrived at this lovely tropical looking caravan park -The Discovery Holiday Park & once again we scored the million dollar real estate right next to Lake Kununurra.  About 8 neighbours welcomed us by bringing their chairs & nibblies for happy hour.  (Our site by the lake has been their happy hour spot until we moved in).  They were happy, nice & informative people & very quickly the conversation came to solving Australia’s problems.  I don’t know why this group of people aren’t in Parliament, they are all retired & could be volunteers, instead the hopeless lot we have there now.

The extra long shower was FANTASTIC.

The sun was rising as we got our breakfast together & prepared for our helicopter flight & the walks.  We drove off a bit after 8am to be at the Purnululu Airport by 8.30am for our helicopter flight briefing.  The drive to the airport was worthwhile as it gave us glimpses of the Bungle Bungle Ranges & the distinctive beehive shapes & orange & black banding.  The helicopter was a Robinson 244, a tiny four seater with the doors removed for better visibility.  Helicopter passengers returning advised us that it was very cold & we should rug up more.  We went back to the cars & grabbed our warm coats & jumpers plus John & I grabbed our beanies. John & Sue took off first in a black helicopter then Tereza & I followed about 10 minutes later in a cream coloured helicopter.  This was our first flight in a helicopter, it was interesting, a tiny helicopter, four seats very close together & no doors, plus it was a bit windy.  It was very disconcerting as we took off, we were both holding on to the grab bars in front of us, the helicopter was bouncing around a fair bit in the wind, then when the pilot banked it, it felt like we were going to fall out (I did mention there were no doors) as the view was straight down to the ground.  However, the view from the helicopter was absolutely spectacular, seeing the Bungles from the air gives you a true perspective of how large the range is, the massive area it covers & how spectacularly beautiful it all is.  Again, the hundred odd photos I took don’t even come close to capturing the spectacle (I would have taken more photos but it’s a shade difficult trying to hold a camera with both hands when you are thinking you might fall out).  The flight took 30 minutes & we flew from one end of the range to the other & over all of the most spectacular sights.  One thing that amazed me was how flat it was on top, there is a huge amount of flat area on top of the range, covered sparsely with spinifex & small shrubs & trees. The pilot gave us a running commentary during the flight.  The Bungle Bungle is world heritage listed.   When we landed we were both on a high adrenalin rush.  We headed straight for a hot coffee to warm us up & settle us down.  John & Sue both enjoyed it as much as we did. The only way to describe the helicopter flight and the unreal sight is – woW!!  wOW!!! W O W !!!!!!

Next we headed out & drove 13km to the Piccaninny Creek car park for the walk to Cathedral Gorge, the dirt road was surprisingly smooth. (This is the route taken by the tour operators for the tourists who fly in & out & taken to the walks by great big 4 wheel drive buses)  Walking amongst the beehive domes & being so close to the Bungles is very special, the walk into Cathedral Gorge was full of stops for photos & each bend we came to in the track opened up another amazing sight.  The finale when we reached the end of Cathedral Gorge was impressive, (no words can describe it) a giant amphitheatre with amazingly high walls, gouged out by a waterfall & swirling turbulence after heavy rain.  It must be a very impressive sight in the wet season. (it would have to be seen from the air, the torrential waterfalls & rushing of the water would make it impossible to get in).  We soaked in the spirit of the atmosphere as we had the whole place to ourselves, not another person in sight, it is an amazing feeling being there & the acoustics are incredible as well.  You can’t help feeling spiritual, the enormity of it all & that you are right there!

The next walk was to the Piccaninny Creek Lookout, a short walk of about 800m.  The amazing sandstone bed of Piccaninny Creek for a short distance before veering off around the beehive domes up to another spectacular outlook over the Tanami Desert with some diminishing beehive shaped outcrops in the distance.  Thankfully there was a cooling breeze coming in off the Tanami & it made a welcome respite from the heat, we would hate to be here in summer when it was really hot. The walk back to the car park included the short Domes Walk where we discovered the nest of a wren with two baby chicks being cared for by a diligent mother/father, they were so tiny & cute.  On the way back to Walardi camp we stopped for a few more photo shoots as the light had changed a lot since we had come in & the view had changed significantly.  The photos do not have the brilliance of the colours, they don’t even come near to doing it justice.

A late lunch, then cheese & bikkies followed by dinner of BBQ steak & sausages washed down with another nice red, good conversation & a lot of laughs. The stars are amazing, (the sky is so enormous out here) horizon to horizon & so crystal clear.

Again we were woken at false dawn by the same species of bird as at Wolfe Creek.  We got up about half an hour before sunrise to greet another beautiful morning.  We went to Echidna Chasm first up, the most northerly track in the Bungle Bungle Ranges.  The Bungles close up are amazing, a massive conglomerate of large washed river stone in a sediment of sand, all with a deep orange reddish colour.  The walk into Echidna Chasm is in a dry creek bed, full of rounded river stones.  The massive walls close in as the chasm gets narrower & narrower then you finally end up in a very large amphitheatre type environment, with towering stone walls all around, reaching hundreds of metres up. The photos don’t even begin to come close to capturing the beauty & the feeling of this amazing place.  The walk back is just as beautiful, seeing it all from a different perspective.  We saw a colony of tiny bats flitting about overhead inside the dark chasm as they jockeyed for roosting space.

Next stop was the Mini Palms Track, around 5km return into another magnificent gorge.  This track had a lot more walking over a dry creek bed before we finally reached the entrance to another amazing chasm, this one was partially blocked in lots of places by massive boulders that had fallen from the walls.  We had to crawl underneath, squeeze between & clamber over these giant rocks to reach a magnificent view of the start of the creek & all along lots of palm trees, again another even larger amphitheatre with a long way down as the viewing platform was built on top of a massive fallen boulder.  The birdlife and plant life is very diverse & interesting.  The walk back out was again very interesting with the different views, although the day was starting to heat up as it was getting close to midday, so a bit of sweating & lots of drinks of water. The wonder & beauty of those enormous rocks & the terrible drive here was forgotten.

We headed back to our campsite at Kurrajong, hooked up the vans & drove back to the visitor’s centre to register & pay for our stay in the park before going to our next camp site at Walardi where we plan to stay for two nights.  Our washing certainly got a good shake & a good breeze to dry them. An early start to dinner as we were all hungry after our long walks & we only had a very simple light lunch.  John & Tereza again whipped up a superb lamb meal washed down with some more red.

We were woken about an hour before sunrise by a bird singing to its mate, a beautiful sound, then a ten minute walk to be up on the rim of the crater, to watch the sunrise.  The sunrise was magnificent, from the rim of the crater we could see from horizon to horizon in all directions – we are convinced that the world is flat!  The sky is a dome on top of it! The sun lighting up the spinifex plains & their silver seed heads & the white gums is just stunning.  We walked a third of the way round the rim of the crater to see the sun shining on the inside rim. It was time to head back for breakfast & to pack.

The 23km of road back out didn’t feel as bad as the way in to Wolfe Creek.  About 2km from the last gate nearest to the main road we came across a person bogged to the axles in mud.  He had made the wrong decision when he tried to go around the water.  We had a look to see if we could help him but he was well & truly stuck & needed a winch out, which neither John or I had on our cars.  The remaining 120 km on the Tanami Track to the highway was fairly reasonable dirt road, compared to what we had been on. There were only a few bad patches & we completed the Tanami Track without incident. When we drove on to the highway I thought we arrived in heaven – so smooth & quite.

We stopped at Halls Creek to refuel & have some lunch.  John took the opportunity to tighten up the wheel bearings on his new Vista off road van, as it was only a week old and had done some pretty hard travelling.  We checked the cars over then headed up the highway (nice smooth bitumen for a change) 120km to the Bungle Bungle turn off.

The road into the Bungles was very slow going, with lots of slow bumpy bends, up & over blind crests, twisting & turning plus a couple of deep bumpy creek crossings.  It took us around 2 ½  hours to complete the 50km into the visitor’s centre, then the additional 6km to the Kurrajong campground.  It was dark by the time we got there. We had to find a campsite in the dark & set up.  Dinner was again very nice washed down with a celebratory red as we had completed three significant achievements today, Wolfe Creek, the Tanami Track & the Bungles road.  On the track I sometimes wondered why we are doing this, at home we could be sitting in comfort watching Get Away on the big screen.   Amazingly, as we were setting up a camping friend we met in Alice Springs came over & greeted us, they had recognised our vans in the dark as we went past their camp sites.

The night wasn’t as cold as they have been & we woke with the sunrise.  A check of the cars & vans before a healthy breakfast & packing of the Karavan for travel.  We were just leaving as our new German friends were emerging from their car.  The destination today was Wolfe Creek Meteorite Crater, another 340kms of the rough Tanami Track.  Our bicycle friend must have had a very early start as I saw his tracks for quite a distance before they disappeared around the next big mine, the Tanami Gold Mine.  The road was still as bad as the previous day, more corrugations, dust, water, etc.  We stopped after 125km when we reached the Western Australia border & had lunch, we finished all our salad vegies & fruit.  We gained 1 ½ hours extra time (or 2 hours extra to Canberra time).   Whilst we were eating & having a photo shoot, more cars pulled up for the same reason, including a family of German tourists.  The Tanami Track did not improve & some sections were even worse, travel became slow.  We passed another large gold mine, the Coyote, then we came across a recently wrecked Mitsubishi Pajero that had an accident & strewn everything out of the car as it rolled.  The car had been stripped of the motor & wheels & left on the side of the road (not off the road).  Interestingly it had a sticker on the back that said “I survived the Overland Track to Cape York”, it didn’t survive the Tanami.

The scenery was again spectacular at times, with the desert looking so green after all of the recent rain, the spinifex was in flower & the vast plains of silver spinifex seed heads waving in the sunlight was stunning.  Again the flowers on the bushes & trees are very pretty.

We finally reached the turnoff to Wolfe Creek & the 20kms into the crater was some of the worst road conditions so far.  The road was extremely corrugated & there was lots of water on the road.  We set up the vans when we reached the campsite at the crater then went for a walk.

The crater rim is an unassuming mound of rock dabbled with spinifex, however, once on the rim & looking into the crater, the sight is awesome. This is the first crater I have seen & it is amazing to see the round crater, steep sides leading down into it & the amount of green plant life inside the crater.  Normally this isn’t green.  There is a large circle of taller shrubs in the centre of the crater where water gathers after rainfall.  We walked down inside the crater & out into the centre where the salt is laying on the surface.  With no escape, the accumulated salt lays on the surface after the water evaporates.  The view from inside the crater is also magnificent, with the deep red colours highlighted by a setting sun against the steep sides.  Again, the plant life is so varied & the flowers are beautiful, many varieties I had not seen before.  The walk out of the crater with the loose rock was a lot simpler than the walk down into it.

The next agenda item was a shower for all, so up with the little shower tent, off with the clothes & a very quick wet down, soap, then rinse off was had by all.  It made us feel so much better.  The sunset was spectacular & the stars were again so clear and bright.

John put together a very nice Moroccan Lamb dinner & Tereza served up some Hungarian Lecso, followed by a nice cheesecake with sour cherry sauce.  Another good day, well shaken & stirred.

Tilmouth Wells to Rabbit Flat over the Tanami Track, 420kms of dirt road.  The Tanami Track has a reputation for being rough & it lived up to it.  Corrugations, dusty, sandy, road train tracks, muddy, boggy, water over the road, washouts, potholes, stones, it had it all & then some.  We started to wonder why we were putting ourselves through all this.  The day was fairly long & tough, some places we could do 80km/h, other places we were crawling our way around and through the water over the road.  It is lucky that we were held up in Alice Springs for a few days & it dried up, if we left any sooner it would have been an absolute hell.  Some of the scenery (mainly flat) was absolutely beautiful, particularly the wildflowers & bushes out in flower.  Some of the scenery was fairly drab, scrubby bushes at the side of the road.  At other times we saw forests of giant termite mounds amongst the spinifex on the treeless plains.  It was never boring because you had to concentrate so much on the road, most of the time we drove on the opposite side or the middle of the road to try & go against corrugations & watch out for dust in the distance for an oncoming vehicle to try & work our way back to the right side through soft sand, ploughed up mud or water.

We stopped regularly to check tyres & shock absorbers & to make sure everything was holding together with all the shaking it was getting.  The walking & stretching also eased the muscles from sitting so long.  There are quite a few abandoned & stripped cars at the side of the road, some the victims of crashes where it was more cost effective to just leave them there.

We passed a very substantial gold mine on the way, the Granites gold mine, the scale of operation is huge.  After a very long day we finally came to the turnoff to the Rabbit Flat Roadhouse, a very rubbish strewn intersection with a couple of abandoned cars for good measure.  The short road into the Rabbit Flat Roadhouse was extremely corrugated & rough.  In there we met a few other people refuelling & looking to camp the night & we had a bit of a chat with them about the road conditions.  We had a good chat with Bruce, the owner of Rabbit Flat & our friend John passed on the regards of a mutual friend.  Bruce said that his camping area was still too wet to camp at & suggested another spot about 3km further along the Tanami Track. We also met a bloke riding a bicycle along the Track, I had seen bicycle tracks on the road as we were driving but had not expected to see anyone.  He was doing it tough with all of the corrugations & was planning to ride to Broome.  We refuelled,  $2.30 a litre, then headed off to find the camp site before dark, with another few travellers.  We camped amongst a small mulga clump about 500m off the Tanami Track,  settled into our customary cheese, bikkies & wine before a nice dinner of BBQ marinated chicken.  We invited two young German tourists in an old Holden station wagon join us for an after dinner wine, they were traveling Australia & were on their way to Alice Springs.  We had a good discussion with Johannes & Christianne before wishing them well on their journey. The stars are absolutely amazing out here, you can see stars from horizon to horizon & the Milky Way is so distinct.

We were up about half an hour before sunrise to start packing & be ready to take the car into the garage by 8am.  The windscreen on the car was clear & I thought, “good, not so cold”, however, as the sun rose, the windscreen froze & my fingers were numb from touching all the metal & wet parts as I was packing things away.  By the time we got the car across the other side of Alice Springs, parked in the front of the garage & unhitched the Karavan it was 8.30am. The people at Centralian Motors kindly gave us a lift into town so that we could absentee vote for the upcoming elections, do a little more grocery shopping & have a last look around town.  It was busy at the electorate office as the voting papers had finally arrived & a lot of other visitors were in there doing the same as we did.

We had a good look through the old Government Administration Building that was a modest dwelling, however, by early Alice Springs standards it was large, with four bedrooms.  The buildings main claim to fame was the hosting of the Royal Couple (the Queen & Phil) during a short visit in 1963. (the Queens bathroom was stripped bare so no one could sit on her throne). There was a subsequent visit by Charles & Dianne not long after they were married. Charles & some other guests got food poisoning, it was 40 plus degrees and it took 1 & ½ days to prepare the food & very poor refrigeration. The funny part about this was that Charles had to have brand new toilets wherever he went, he wouldn’t use one after anyone else but that day he didn’t care.  It was quite interesting with period furniture, photos & information panels throughout the building.

I also took the opportunity to invest in a new wide angle lens for the camera, the scenery here is just amazing & the existing lenses I have just don’t have a wide enough field of view. (nor has this new lens, you have to be here to see it, no wide lens will do justice to the scenery). This new lens should hopefully improve the situation as we travel to the Bungles & the Kimberleys. He is just a spendthrift.

We picked up the few groceries at Woolies, had a bite to eat then were picked up by the Centralian Motors courtesy car & taken back to the garage to the car with a new shock absorber.  Sue & John had also finished all the bits & pieces they wanted to do & were waiting for us.

Hitched up to the Karavan again & off to the Tanami Track.  We travelled a shade over 200kms and stopped at Tilmouth Wells where we refuelled, topped up the diesel tank in the Karavan (for the first time during our trip) & filled our spare jerrycan.  We decided to camp at Tilmouth Wells for the night in the adjoining campground, quickly set up amidst the chirping of budgerigars & other birds then went for a walk across the creek next to the campground.  The trees are alive with budgerigars looking for nesting sites.  Back to camp for some pate & cheese, plus a nice bottle of sparkling red that John had chilled.  Dinner was a combined effort of John & Tereza & we had another superb fish & vegies.

It was good to finally leave Alice Springs, we have been here before and seen most of the tourist sites, but Ron & I still managed to find some more chasms, gorges, gaps, dry river beds (that is what they are here) bush tracks that needed to be walked, climbed & trees & flowers to be admired & photographed.  In town, shops that needed to be shopped in, we sure did boost Alice Springs’ economy. John & Sue went to the Desert Park & loved it.  We saw it before.

At 2.15 pm we headed for the desert.  We drove mainly on single lane bitumen.   When a big road train approached we would pull over and stop – they go fast. We travel at 90kms/hr with very many stops. The scenery is quite beautiful, the surrounding area is flat as a pancake (red sand with some tufts of grass) but further in the distance the mountains just pop up from the ground & look spectacular.  We are camping at a bush camp, no electricity but they have good hot showers.  The day after tomorrow we should be crossing over the Western Australian boarder so we are starting to cook up our vegetables & eat all our fruit because they have very strict quarantine.

Another cold night & a frosty start to the day, you’d think we were still in Canberra.  First up we found out that the shock absorber was dispatched from Melbourne by air & should be here today & we are booked in for tomorrow afternoon to have it fitted.  We checked a few camping stores to see if we could find a windshield for our gas wok burner but all sold out. They had too many wet windy days recently and Alice Springs is a city of caravans/campers transiting through. Everyone is amazed about the big freeze that is happening here.

We headed out to the West MacDonnell Ranges, our first stop being Standley Chasm.  A lovely walk up a stony creek bed, wildflowers out in bloom & the most amazing display of river red gums clinging precariously to life, no matter what nature had thrown at them.  We were in luck when we reached the chasm as one wall was bathed in sunlight, this only happens for about half an hour a day as the walls are so steep & the chasm is so narrow.  A beautiful show with all the deep reds & oranges.  We took our time walking back & enjoyed the stunning scenery and trees.  Next we headed off on the southern loop track at Standley Chasm, climbing the range, then descending into another creek before walking back down it to the road, about an hour of absolutely stunning visions, again the camera cannot do any justice to how magnificent the scenery is.  The amazing thing was that we were by ourselves, the vast majority of people only walk up to the chasm.

Next stop was Simpson’s Gap, another very pretty creek & gorge, but it doesn’t come close to Standley Chasm.  It was only a short walk up & back.

Back to Alice Springs & into mobile reception, we had a message that the shock absorber has arrived & we can have it fitted first thing in the morning – great.  We will have an early start tomorrow, we will have to be packed and take the Karavan with us & leave for the crossing of the Tanami Desert as soon as the mechanics finish.  The delay may have been a blessing in disguise, the roads should have dried out more.

Coffee & cake for afternoon tea as we started to clean up, wash clothes & pack for our departure.  Another nice dinner with Sue & John washed down by a red.

A cold night & a cold start to the day with ice all over the car & the caravan, it took an hour or so after the sun rose to melt it away.  Today was a mish-mash sort of day for us & we started out fairly early.

I took a look under the car on the weekend to see if there was anything loose after the 6,500km we have travelled so far, with a fair bit of rough dirt road & discovered that nothing was obviously loose, but a shock absorber was leaking oil.  It was Picnic Day yesterday so today was the first opportunity to order a new shock absorber, airfreight from Melbourne, so hopefully here Wednesday afternoon & fitting on Thursday.  We also decided to buy some Rock Tamers (big extra mud flaps)  from the 4WD store to try & reduce the number of stones on the dirt roads bouncing off the Karavan & into the back of the car.  The dirt road from Gregory River to Camooweal threw up a lot of stones & the luggage crate on the Karavan had a tidy assortment of rocks, the Karavan drawbar had collected quite a few & the back bumper of the car also had a lot of small stones still sitting on it, the bigger ones obviously had fallen off.  We have seen a few cars with broken rear windows because of this.  So, it took me a few hours to fit them to the car.

While Tereza finished her house work in 5 minutes & read the rest of the day.  Yes, I read all day, I don’t know how come I always have work to do at home – I think we will live in the Karavan from now on.  The Karavan is smaller than our bedroom and we have everything in it.  We hardly have any washing up, we wouldn’t use more than 2 or 3 litres of water a day. Our washing is shaken by the travel, so Ron could just take it to work with him & washing and rinsing we don’t use more than 2 or 3 buckets of water for a week’s washload, all the waste of time & water used at home.

We also had a bit of banking & business matters to attend to, plus, importantly, a new pair of sunglasses for Tereza.  (left at home)

Our friends John & Sue took the opportunity to do a bit of shopping & a bit more sorting out of their new Vista caravan, making sure it will be ready for our next trip across the Tanami Desert.

The afternoon was closed off by our customary cheese & bikkies with afternoon tea. John cooked some lovely fish & Tereza some vegies for dinner, which we shared in our Karavan with a glass or two of red.  We solved the problems of Australia & a decent stab at some political debate.   It’s good that we sort of feel the same way – one should leave politics & religion alone.