Friday, June 22, 2012

Lake Argyle & Kununurra

Crossing into WA
We crossed the WA boader at about lunchtime. Its like entering another country. Clocks back 2 1/2 hours hand over all your fresh fruit and veg and honey drive through and get the boarder photos. We headed straight to Kunnunurra for supplies and then doubled back to Lake Argyle.

Something I may not have mentioned earlier, but the moment you cross to the NT boarder everywhere you go there  are grass fires near the roads. These are usually deiberately lit to prevent big fires later in the dry season so after a while you just get used to driving past fires all the time (the first time this happened Daz an I were super worried but now we're pretty blase about it.) The reason I mention this is beacause on the road to Lake Argyle we drove through a pretty big fire front. As this was creeping over some mountains and up gullies we were able to see some massive trees in the distance flaring into massive fireballs as the fire got them. Gives you an appreciation into why out of control fires can be unstoppable.
Fire front on the road to lake Argyle

More fires
The Lake Argyle  caravan park had good facilities with ensuite style showers infinity pool overlooking the lake, nice  green grass, plenty of shade, boat tours and restaurant. For our first night  we ate a meal at the restaurant ......fish called "silver cobbler". Sounds nice eh? I found out the next day that that's just Western Australian for catfish! Still....it wasn't  dreadful I suppose.

Lake Argyle from the Dam Wall across the Ord River
Lake Argyle is massive and technically classified as an inland sea. It was built by constructing a single dam wall  across the Ord River over the duration of 3 dry seasons back in the 70s.  What is amazing is that the dam wall isn't  really all that big yet its construction has created a body of water that is bigger than some countries in Europe! What is disturbing is that the freshies in the Lake grow up to about 3 m..... still think freshies are harmless? I don't! We took a sunset cruise and we saw several of these 3m freshies...and I can assure you that I was not about to go swimming with them. Also on the Lake you can look north and see water as far as the eye can see,  then look south and see the same.  When you look south there appears to be hill with a steep drop off jutting out into the lake in the distance. This is actually the open cut face of the  Argyle diamond mine and is 30 km away from the lake! Lake Argyle is used for water storage for the region as well as hydro electricity - mostly for the diamond mine.

Lake Argyle Cruise
3m Freshies are a common site at Argyle
Captain Jess at the Helm
Sunset over Lake Argyle
Speaking of diamonds, the Argyle diamond mine produces 1/4 of the worlds diamonds, and is famous for producing rare pink diamonds - one of which now adorns my wedding ring...yes its very small...and yes small is all mere mortals can afford ;-)

We did a bit of 4wding around spillway creek and did some lure casting in the creek with no luck as usual. As our travels took as around the area it became apparent  that the fire we saw on day 1 was getting uncomfortably close to the caravan park. So it was time for the locals to take action. Thankfully the wind was lowing the right way for a bit of back burning...so they lit up the hill behind the caravan park. 45 mins later and there wasn't much left on the hill to burn (try explaining the logic of lighting a fire to save us from a fire to a 5 & 6 year old)
Back burning on the hill behind the Caravan park. Daz and the girls are standing about 20m from our camper!



Next day (after 3 nights at Argyle) we hit the road. It was into Kununurra to pick up Nats wedding ring and top the car up to the eyeballs with food and fuel ready for the Gibb River Road. Driving into town we hit mobile phone reception and among other messages we had one from the Summers Family who we had parted with at Litchfield NP. They were at Home Valley Station and hoping we could bring them some nuts and bolts for their trailer.

With nuts and bolts in hand we headed west, but before turning onto the Gibb we headed towards Wyndham for about 10 km to visit a place called "The Grotto". Situated on the NE side of the Cockburn Range the Grotto is pretty much a rocky hole about 100m deep that's opened up in the ground with a creek that falls into it. As a mother, not much scares the hell out of me more than seeing my kids standing next to a 100m drop off with nothing between the two, so it was with my heart in my mouth and Matilda firmly gripped in my sweaty hand, that I edged my way down the VERY steep steps (no railing) the whole time reminding poor Daz not to let go of Jess....." not even for a second!" Nag nag nag. The bottom was impressive with cliffs surrounding a plunge pool and lovely mosses and ferns growing all over one wall. Unfortunately there  were a few water monitors around and given my love for all things reptillian in these parts, I decided that swimming was out of the question.



Once we got to the top again we hit the road back south and hung a right onto the Gibb River Road. This was an exciting moment for us, as the Gibb is touted as the 4wd touring Mecca of  the Kimberley (just pick up any 4wd mag), So as Daz let some air out of the tyres I went a little crazy with the camera getting the customary shots of the road signs and of course that vital point of when the bitumen gives way to gravel.
It wasn't long before before reality began to sink in....around every hairy bend and flood way the well maintained gravel road would suddenly switch to bitumen again before switching back to well maintained gravel again! What was going on? Where were the washouts and corrugations that the magazines all raved about? oh well - at least there were  less grey nomads in their 8 wheeled mansions here.

Cockburn Ranges
We started to see a few turnoffs to places that we knew of: El Questro, Emma Gorge and of course the stunning Cockburn Ranges loomed into view. These ranges are just as magnificent  in the flesh (if not more so) than the mags make out. Although the wind had kicked up enough dust to make photography futile, we knew that as we were nearing our destination of Home  Valley Station that we'd be back this way in the next few days, so the photos could wait for another day.

Our last obstacle for the day was crossing the Pentacost River. This crossing is about 150m across and can be pretty rugged in the right circumstances. Fortunately for us the water was only about 40cm deep and the Patrol cruised comfortably over the rocky ford with Nat sitting on the roof filming. If you want to start a business, here's an idea...go the the Pentacost  River a and film people driving across it. Nat filmed 2 people crossing and could easily have accepted offers of money for the footage...instead (being on holidays and all) she did it for zip.

Continuing on we pulled into Home Valley about 20 minutes later and were greeted by the Summers family who had dibbs on a good camp site with plenty of shade and green grass. They were happy to receive delivery of their nuts and bolts for their trailer, and the kids were soon making a bee line for the swimming pool.

Pentacost River

Home Valley Station