To the West! To the West!

Excitement, satisfaction, warmth, many words to try to describe our time up North, but now, time to make our way down and across to the West. Once again we stopped by Katherine, this time we didn’t buy much as we knew we were crossing the border an you cannot take fresh food so we did what we had to do and kept moving. On the way to Kununurra we stopped at two free camps and the last place before crossing… Zebra rock mine.

Of course, we were excited, we had stayed there 3 years ago when we travelled with Lyn an Mark and loved it, especially the Lake Argyle sunset tour. A lot of things had changed since, the tour was now for 14 years + and we were devastated at the thought of not been able to do it with the boys. When we got there we caught up with Ruth, its her family business and of course she could not remember us but she was happy to let our kids go in the tour. We got ready to go and this time we had a different tour guide, Kim, Ruth’s husband. The tour was very different in many ways including where we stopped for a swim however the sunset was still the same…magnificent!

Some of our best sunset photos are from Lake Argyle, by now, you have probably got used to me saying “the best sunset”, but I just cannot help it.

Last time we were at the mine we got quite a few Zebra rocks which only occur in the Kimberleys, the plan was to file and polish them to make whatever we wanted, may that be jewellery or ornament, well three years later I am still waiting, the kids quickly got over it and nothing happened so this time around I was very surprised when Carlos bought me a Zebra rock pendant. I love it, so unique… will never take it off.

We moved along and crossed the border, Western Australia, so far it has been going down memory lane as we have done this before. Last time we came across and South towards Halls Creek stopping at the Bungle Bungle Range. This time we were toying with the idea of crossing through the Gibb River Road. At the border we had our caravan checked for goodies, the inspection was very quick, could have been my dogs non stop barking.

Kununurra appeared a little bit bigger to what I remembered, we had not made any bookings at any caravan park and to our surprise the caravan parks we called were fully booked and not only that, also charging a fortune! Luckily for us I remembered another traveller saying that the Showgrounds were a good deal, so I quickly called and the caretaker told us that there was only one more spot left so to come down. As we drove in another caravan was behind us and how fortunate were we to get that last spot, even more when he only charged us the base rate not realising we had 3 kids…bonus.

The Showgrounds were beautiful, nice green oval, huge tree with lots of shade and overall, compared to many Showgrounds, there were not many sites. As we parked I saw a familiar face right next to us, and yes, another family that we met in Darwin were parked right next to us. Its very easy to keep meeting the same people as we are going the same way and most of the time doing the same things. The kids had an absolute blast as they got along really well with their kids. We stayed three nights in total and really enjoyed the time there, we went to the outdoor cinema and watched the Incredibles 2, unfortunately we were very unprepared and froze our bottoms which were already numb from sitting on a wooden bench but the kids loved it.

We also ventured out to the Ivanhoe Crossing, quite confronting when you first look at it but once you get across you cannot stop wanting to keep driving across it over and over again. The water levels weren’t too high and of course any river crossing is an exciting opportunity for the kids to stick their head out and enjoy the unique opportunity to drive “literally” through a river.

Before we left we had made the conscious decision to do the Gibb River road, our friends Toni and Graham did not think is was too bad so we though life is too short, why not do it. For those who do not know about the Gibb River road, it is about 600 km road that is renowned for destroying cars and caravans due to its rough condition.

We bought some supplies and protected the van as much as we could and we set off, another adventure on the making....The Gibb