We left Timber Creek planning to stop in a bush camp site one more night before going through the quarantine check point. In the event, we reached the check point at 1.30 pm WA time. Having cleared out most of the fruit and vegetables, I donated the onions and the honey to a pom in a motorhome who we met at lunchtime in a rest area and who was going east.
The road from Timber Creek to the border is very interesting because it run through several different environments. First there is the Victoria River which is quite big and gives the land a well watered appearance. Then there is a stretch where there are jump ups, silcrete capped hills, which stand up from the surrounding plain with flat tops because the top layer of rock is hard sandstone which doesn't erode as much as the underlying quartzite. Later, the hills become more rugged and crowd the road into a narrow declivity. This area is characterised by lots of big boab trees, the largest maybe three metres (ten feet) in diameter.
The quarantine check was something of an anticlimax after the lurid tales we had heard. The young man who check us out was very pleasant and looked in the fridge to check that I wasn't telling porkies and then waved us through.
The stretch from the border into Kununurra is like the road into Alice Springs or Cloncurry with small rugged hills forcing the road to rise and fall.
We had decided to park up in Kununurra and do the sightseeing in the Little Motley while we wait for all the mail to arrive.
The caravan parks were mostly either too small or full or both. We finally found an emergency site in the last one we checked out and settle in comfortably in the corner of the park for a week.
There is quite a lot to see around here. Wyndham is a hundred km (60 miles) up the road and has a five rivers lookout which is reputed to have good sunsets. Lake Argyle which was formed by the Ord River Dam in the immediate post war period is down the road. The Bungle Bungles are nearby but in accessible except by aircraft. Kununurra itself has a lake and a few other minor attractions so we won't be bored.
We decided to see the Bungle Bungles by plane from Kununurra and booked a flight for next Tuesday. The obvious thing to do today was go to Wyndham.
As we were approaching Wyndham, we had a most alarming experience. I had left the radio scanning for stations and, as is found a channel from Wyndham, the first sounds were a loud space movie alarm sound which could have been a major alarm from the car or a new high tech police siren (or a flying saucer trying to attract our attention). Both Jean and I were startled until the announcer's voice came on a I realised what had happened.
We both had expectations that Wyndham would be really interesting with all the remnants of a busy past. The reality was very different. The port is separate from the town and is just a tanker wharf and some oil storage tanks. The town is bereft of anything attractive, even the shops were somehow depressing. I guess the population is low and there can't be many jobs here.
We had to lunch somewhere and the only place was the pub which looked pretty run down. The food was good and we enjoyed fish and chips which were obviously not of the frozen variety.
We ended our visit by driving up to the Five Rivers Lookout. This is 330 metres (1100 ft) directly above the port and provides a tremendous view of the estuary on which the town is built. Five rivers including the Ord feed into this bay and the entrance to the sea is still some way to the north. Sadly there was a bush fire which had made a lot of haze so we didn't get the best view. It was, nevertheless, pretty impressive and made the two hundred kilometre round trip worthwhile.
We both woke up with painful back muscles so we veged out and watched the Commonwealth Games on TV.
We continued the treatment of yesterday and stayed at home.
The last stage of the Tour de France was on "live" on SBS at ten o'clock in the evening. Having started to watch, we had to see the end three and a half hours later. It was worth it when Robbie McEwen not only won the stage but also clinched the battle with Eric Zabel for the green jersey. With just four Aussies in the race, it was amazing that there were three in the top four (or was it four in the top five) in the green jersey competition.
I had discovered the Kellys Knob lookout on the town map so we went there on the way into town. Kellys Knob is a small sandstone hill just to the north of the town and the road up to the TV transmitters gives access to the lookout. Perhaps 60 m (200 ft) above the plain, the view is of the town and the floodplain laid out map fashion.
We went to the Post Office to check on the mail but the "Mail not sorted yet" sign was out so we decided to while away some time visiting the Mirima National Park, a small park just next to the town.
Mirima, or Hidden Valley, is another strange sandstone feature with two long ridges forming a tight flat bottomed valley with a very protected environment. One of the features of the ridges is a gap which winds through the western ridge from the end of which one can look out over the town. This place had to be special to the aborigines but there was no information about this beyond a recognition of the name of the tribe on the information boards. I guess the Western Australian Department of Conservation and Land Management (CALM) is less interested in the links to the past than the Northern Territory National Parks Commission. This may exemplify the difference between the two states regarding their attitude to their indigenous populations.
We returned to the Post Office to find that the parcel I had sent myself from Katherine had arrived but the mail from Ferny Hills and from Landbase was still coming.
This morning we got up early to go on a sightseeing flight to the Bungle Bungles. The aircraft was a turbo-prop Cessna Caravan which makes for a very quiet and comfortable flight. The wind had got up so it was a bit bumpy but both Jean and I survived without losing our breakfast, unlike at least one of the passengers who spent too much time with his eye glued to the viewfinder of his video camera.
It takes about an hour to reach the real purpose of the flight but on the way we saw Lake Kununurra, the Packsaddle Plain where the fruit is grown using the irrigation water from the dam, and Lake Argyle which is huge. It is near its highest level ever but still only at 50% capacity. We also flew over Lissadell and Texas stations which are measured in hundreds of thousands of hectares (millions of acres) and which support only tens of thousands of cattle. Texas Downs station presently has two staff which will briefly increase for the muster when beasts are selected for live shipment to South-east Asia from Wyndham.
The Bungle Bungles are amazing. The rock is striated sandstone with alternate layers with damp layers supporting cyanobacteria which colour the rock grey and raw sandstone layers which are red. The layers are numerous which gives a unique appearance. From the air we got a fine view but not the strange feeling we got while walking beside Uluru. This place must have been really special to the aborigines too.
Because these pictures are so remarkable, I have linked them to larger versions.
We needed to do the laundry but the caravan facilities are inadequate for the large number of people in the park so we went to the laundromat in town.
After morning tea, we looked in at the picnic area by the dam and spotted Pied Heron as well as Straw-necked Ibis and a Pelican.
We went to the Zebra Rock Gallery a few kilometres out of town on the banks of Lake Kununurra. Here they make ornaments from unusual striated sandstone which is found only around here. Some of the pieces are very pretty but all are over priced so we had a cup of coffee, fed the catfish and admired the birds including a tame flock of crimson finches, a Rainbow Bee-eater, and a Whistling Kite. On the way back to town we stopped by the road to identify the Brown Falcons and Australian Kestrels which perch on the power lines waiting for lunch to show up.
Back in town, we discovered that the mail still hadn't arrived so we will have to stay on a little longer in Kununurra. Charlie Dawson has found a place to park up so we'll join them tomorrow.
We moved to the free camp that Charlie had arranged, had lunch, and went into town to shop and collect the mail. Both satchels had arrived so I spent the rest of the afternoon sorting and setting up the necessary actions. We had happy hour with the Dawsons and then retired to the Motley for dinner and a quiet evening.