Across the Tanami to Alice and the Red Centre

With the Bungles conquered we headed back to Halls Creek and then into the Tanami. We didn’t make it all the way to Wolfe Creek because Nat had spent too long stuffing around publishing the Blog site at Halls Creek (of course the time we spent bogged on the road out of the Bungles wouldn’t have contributed to our running late at ALL). Instead of camping at the Wolfe Creek crater we did a bit of paddock bashing off the Tanami Road till we found somewhere that was pretty well hidden from the road and with the Croc Repellent near at hand we spent a lovely night bush camping. Next morning we arrived at Wolfe Creek Meteorite Crater and spent an hour or so walking to the rim of it and then down into its centre.

Wolfe Creek Crater

After that we kept heading south till about 3pm where we found a good spot to bush camp again. That night we had a couple of camels walk through our camp which was a bit unnerving. To begin with all you could hear was a crashing through the scrub, and this in turn was followed up by some bellowing and gurgling.  Not sure what was going on Daz (our hero) investigated and soon spotted a few camels cruising through the campsite.

Next morning the wind was blowing its chops off and it was FREEZING! After digging out the winter woollies and then eating breakfast inside the camper so the wind wouldn’t blow the food off the table we packed up and kept going. That evening we made a special effort to find some trees to camp in which made a pretty good wind break.

Tanami Road at the WA/NT boarder

There’s not a lot to say about the Tanami – apart from Wolfe Creek and the 33 burnt out cars that we counted on the road, there’s nothing to look at but scrub and a pretty corrugated road. The thing you have to be careful of is that there’s about 700km between fuel stops, but with the long range fuel tank in the Patrol bridged the distance quite comfortably. We pulled into the aboriginal community of Yuendumu the next day for a fuel stop and I have to say it – the place is scary. You can’t help but shake your head and wonder why the government keeps throwing money into rebuilding houses there that are just getting trashed and why the people living in the houses keep trashing them. Speaking of trash, the edge of the streets are lined with ankle deep rubbish that seems to have been dropped wherever the previous owner finished with it. The locals and their numerous dogs are generally wandering around on the roads or sitting in the park around camp fires that would appear to be using parts of their houses for fuel. Clearly the formula is very wrong in this place. We got our fuel and then got the hell out of there.

A couple of these monster trucks were on their way to a mine on the Tanami Road

We arrived in Alice later that afternoon and looked up Darren’s Cousins. We Spent 2 nights camped in their front yard (Thanks Craig and Debbie & family!) while we restocked and planned the next part of our trip to the Red Centre.  

Simsons Gap

After 2 freezing nights in Alice (getting down to minus 2 degrees) we headed west on Namatjira Drive on what is essentially a gorge crawl (like a pub crawl but with gorges instead of pubs). We did Simpsons Gap just as the handover ceremony was about to begin to hand ownership back to the local tribe and shortly after that had lunch at “Ellery Big Hole”. In an act of rebellion we skipped Stanley Chasm because they were wanting to make us pay about $30 for a family of 4 to have the pleasure of walking up the Chasm! (greedy ***holes). After walking up Serpentine Gorge we skipped Ormiston Gorge as we were running out of time (plus we were feeling a bit over-gorged on gorges), and had a look at the Ocre Pits (this is a creek bed where the banks are vertical walls of ocre – the aboriginals used (and still do use) ocre to make the paint for their rock art).

West Macdonald Ranges

After that we headed to what turned out to be a great camp ground at Redbank Gorge, complete with gas BBQ, fireplace and picnic table. It was a great spot.

Gosses Bluff from afar

Next morning we walked up to Redbank Gorge (really nice)and then we drove to a lookout over Gosses Bluff. This is a crater caused by a comet smashing into the earth here. From the lookout you get a really good sense of the shape of the crater and it looks spectacular. Once we drove into the crater however, it just looks like a bunch of hills. Even so we started to make our lunch here but soon got driven out by a swarm of overly friendly bees that seemed to be everywhere in the crater. We decided lunch could wait and got out of there.

Later that afternoon we arrived at Kings Canyon where there is a caravan park called ‘kings canyon resort’ (original name huh?). We set up camp there and the next morning got up early and packed up to head to the start point of the walks. Kings Canyon is really specular from afar, but the 6km Rim Walk is brilliant. You have to climb a really steep section to begin with, and this gets you to the top of the canyon. From here you walk around a huge chasm through amazing rock formations that look a bit like the Bungle Bungles. Despite the freezing, howling winds and the annoying tour bus groups that straggle around the place like browns cows we loved this walk. Even the Kids loved it – especially parts with steps and bridges!

Kings Canyon from afar

Daz and the Kids pull a few Cheer Leader maneuvers 'Kings Canyon Style'

Bungle Bungle like rock formations at the top of Kings Canyon

Scary Cliff at Kings Canyon

After that we pushed on towards Ayres Rock. Nat spent most of this part of the trip sewing some gloves up so they wouldn’t fall apart, after having chopped the fingers out of them (such is the cold that she never wants to take her gloves off – but they make it hard to do stuff) So now with fingerless gloves she has both warmth and ability to do stuff – even if she DOES look like a hobo.

It wasn’t long before a big orange rock could be seen up ahead in the distance. When the kids saw it they were super excited and we spent the next 45 minutes yelling “THERE IT IS!” everytime we glimpsed the rock between hills.

We booked three nights at the Ayres Rock Resort and that night treated ourselves to dinner out on the town. If you think I’m joking about the town – really I’m not. Just outside the National Park is a full blown tourist town complete with IGA, Petrol Station, newsagent, multiple restaurants, clothes shops etc etc. If you come back in 50 years there’ll probably be high-rise buildings and a MacDonalds and KFC!

Anyhow that night we had a bit of an incident with a bunch of idiots in a tour bus who decided to get really drunk and start letting off firecrackers and running around the streets of the caravan park at 2:30am. We got our revenge the next morning by helping ourselves to their firewood (as we have a half 44 gallon drum for a fire in our camp site). After that we headed in to see the mighty Ayres Rock up close.

Semmos at Ayres Rock

With the freezing wind still howling, the climb to the top of the rock is currently closed. So we decided to do some of the smaller walks around the rock instead. 2km into the first walk the kids seemed to be having the time of their lives (and we had plenty of food and water in the backpacks) so we decided to turn the walk into a full lap of the rock. Well we loved this walk and the kids did as well. They did 11km that day and walked the whole lot without complaining. The most arduous part of it was coming up with enough stories to tell, as the kids decided that they wanted mum and dad to tell stories to pass the time. Of course the fate of Azaria Chamerlain featured as one story, as did the Rolls Family getting caught on top of the rock in an electrical storm back in the early 1980s. Despite being all “talked out” by the end of the walk we had all had a whole bunch of fun.

 

Next day the wind once again thwarted our plans to climb the rock, so we headed to the Olgas and did a few short walks there and headed back to camp early to get a yummy roast beef into the camp oven.

Arctic bush walking around the Olgas

Lookout at the Olgas

Jess and Matilda try to outdo the Euro backpackers in a contest of style

Tomorrow we’re heading for Chambers Pillar before heading east across the Plenty Highway to Boulia, and meeting Nat’s Mum and Dad at Longreach.

Windjana Gorge, Tunnel Creek, Fitzroy Crossing, Geikie Gorge, Old Halls Creek and the Mighty Bungle Bungles.

As you can see from the title of the blog post we've seen a few good places since our last post, which believe it or not was only a week ago. You'd think we'd be exhausted from such a huge week but to be honest one of the good things about this part of the Kimberley is that everything's pretty close together so we're feeling pretty rested.


We drove from Broome and got back onto the Gibb River Superhighway again. After heading back east for a while we turned off the Gibb for the very last time and headed south for about 25 km over some reasonably decent corrugations till we got to the Windjana NP camp grounds. Like Silent Grove the camp grounds were pretty full but we were pretty lucky in snagging a good spot near the communal firepit and the showers. The kids wasted no time in befriending another little girl and it wasn't long before we had a fire going and after dinner we kicked back and has a few beers with the neighbours.

Windjana Gorge

Next morning we did the walk through Windjana Gorge. The kids loved the part where we had to walk through a short rock tunnel to come out the other side onto a beautiful sandy beach with native fig trees growing down by the edge of the Leonard River. There were also towering rock faces on each side of the river and heaps of Freshwater crocs. In one place we counted 25 crocs. Continuing along the river there was one particularly tantalizing place where we counted 6 Barramundi sitting under a log with their noses pointing upstream. Unfortunately you can't fish here but at least I've now seen a Barra in the wild (but I can no longer claim that they don't exist as an excuse for not catching one - dammt). As we walked up the creek Croc spotting Nat saw a pair snuggling up to each other next to a vertical bank. Always in search of a good photo Nat scaled a tree with much banging and crashing and cursing and eventually managed to get right above them. From this great vantage point she lined the crocs up for a great overhead shot. Camera goes "click", crocs errupt in terror, Nat nearly soils herself...cleaver!

Windjana Gorge

Windjana Gorge

We had lunch back at camp and then headed down the track to Tunnel Creek. For this walk you follow the creek about half a kilometer through some caves. In some places you're in water that's about crotch deep and it's dark. Strangely the water at the beginning (up stream) was icy cold (enough to make your legs ache) and your 5 year old have a hissy fit (Matilda went on Nats back from this point). After a while we started to hit warmer patches (yeah and there's not enough people to be making it 'artificially' warm) and there's some little waterfalls coming from the walls - we discovered that the water from these falls is actually the source of the warmth so it must be coming from a spring or more likely from the surface. On the way back we almost struck disaster when Jess got her shoes (crocs) stuck in the mud when she was in knee deep water. As you do when your seven years old, she assumed the monster from the deep was trying to eat her feet first, so she flipped out and ran for her life leaving a shoe stuck in the mud under the water. But it was OK in the end - Jess had no sooner stopped hyperventilating when we found her shoe and pressed on. Despite the Shoe incident and the cold water, that night the kids voted Tunnel Creek the best part of the trip!


Next Morning we headed to Fitzroy Crossing. The plan was to do Geikie Gorge and then free camp 100km or so on the far side of Fitzroy. But when we got to Geike the next boat tour wasn't till 3 pm which meant that we'd be hanging around for hours and then getting to camp really late. So we decided to head back to Fitzroy, camp early and do Geikie next morning. Well it was our lucky day because with an afternoon to kill at Fitzroy Crossing what's to do? Go to the Rodeo of course! We got there in time to see the camp drafting and the bull riding of some bad-arse Brahmans with names like 'Terminator'. We loved it.

Fitzroy Crossing Rodeo

Rodeo

Evening at the rodeo

Geikie Gorge

The next morning we hit Geikie Gorge early and did the boat cruise. If you're looking for value this is the place to go - the family price was $62 to do Geikie compared to $80 per head at Katherine Gorge - sure the boats aren't as fancy but the Gorge is really beautiful and the kids counted about 40 Freshies.
After the cruise we hit the road and found our way to Old Halls Creek to camp for a few nights. Old Halls Creek is about 30km from Halls Creek and is a ghost town. Originally a gold rush town the locals voted to relocate the town back in the 1950s to its current location. There's building ruins and an old cemetery and you can Camp at the Old Halls Creek Lodge. The Lodge itself looks like it would have been beautiful in its heyday but its been allowed to decline over the years. We spent a day exploring around the area - Looking at the China Wall and panning for gold.

Geikie Gorge

It was while at the China Wall that we got our dose of 'stupid bureaucrat' for the trip. This was the only bit of mobile reception (Telstra only) that we could pick up without driving into Halls Creek, so Daz decided to call up the WA Dept of Environment and Conservation to try to confirm our campsite booking for the Bungle Bungles. Camping there is by booking only and he'd booked online about a week ago. They're supposed to send you a booking confirmation by email, but in our case they took our money but we didn't get the email (I guess a decent Content Management System is lacking at the DEC - hope Karl's working on that..) Anyhow we were worried that we'd rock up to the Bungles after driving in on the notoriously difficult 70km 4wd track and find our booking failed...so we tried to call them from the China Wall. Well the stupid switch girl kept answering the phone and then after hearing our story she'd transfer us to (after the 9th bloody phone call) what would appear to be a random phone number:

• FAX machine - 1
• Voicemail - 4
• Mining Company - 1
• Drop out on transfer - 2
• Useless chick who didn't know that the bungles had camp bookings -  1

China Wall

By this time Daz was frothing at the mouth and on the 10th call he asked for the 'complaints department' (btw it's worth noting that it was the same moron answering the phone everytime) so this time when she transferred us we didn't get the complaints department at all....but guess who we DID get? Yep the camp booking people.*sigh*. They confirmed our booking and sent the required email. Clap clap for the DEC...that wasn't too difficult at all!!

After that we had a crack gold panning but all we got was achy break backs (people who fossick for gold for a living earn every cent the hard way I reckon....Nat's back was in agony after a few hours of panning) so we gave up and went back to camp to cook roast pork for dinner.






Next morning it was of to the Bungle Bungles. We'd heard some horror stories about the road into this place and they are mostly true(ish). It's not an extreme 4wd track but it starts corrugated and after a while gets windy with creek crossings with fairly steep entry and exits. People with dual axle caravans tend to leave them at the start of the track but you can get an off road camper in without problems (it's getting that would prove the challenge). As we drove in the Osmund Ranges loom up and are quite spectacular, but eventually (after about 2 hrs) we could see the Bungle Ranges with their characteristic stripes. Happily our camp site was waiting for us although we were a bit miffed by the lack of fire place. A bit of info that we didn't pick up on in any of the Bungle literature was that you can't take firewood into the Bungles from outside, nor can you collect firewood at the Bungles...so given that there's a few communal fire rings (they're no longer at each camp site) where do you suppose you can get wood to burn? The answer is that a DEC volunteer worker drives around each evening and drops a ration of 9 pieces of wood next to each communal fire ring. Where did she get the wood from? OK get this.....they get Jarrah wood shipped (by boat) from Busselton (south of Perth) to Derby and then they truck it to the Bungles. Why? Because there might be ants or termites or seeds in wood that campers bring in. As my 7 year old would say...Re-dic-li-ous!





OK so the firewood issue aside we absolutely loved the Bungles. If you go to only one place in the Kimberley in your life, make it the Bungles...this place just makes you shake you head in wonder. For some reason I was expecting them to be a fairly isolated bunch of rocks, but when you see how big the area is that is covered by the honeycomb formations it blows your mind. Every way you turn there is a miracle of nature. The first day we visited the honeycombs on the southern side of the ranges and walked up to Cathedral Gorge and Picaninny Lookout (this is lookout from where the picture at the top of the blog site is taken). After that we lashed out and went on a chopper flight over the Bungles..it was orsm - and seeing as the booking man remembered us from Mitchell Falls we got it at mates Rates!

Picaninny Creek

Bungles by air

Bungles -by air

Next day we explored the northern end of the Bungles. There's less of the honeycombes but this side has big chasms into the rock that you can walk up. If you're wondering if these are worth exploring how's this for a reference: Both Jess and Matilda walked 8km (Echidna Chasm and Mini Palms Gorge) before lunchtme without a single word of complaint! We loved it.

Bungle Ranges

Northern Side of the Bungle ranges

Mini Palms Gorge - Bungles

All good things must come to an end, and so it was with our Bungle stay. Next day it was time to leave....but as it was Friday the 13th something bad had to happen. As we were drivinnhg out of the 4wd track Daz encountered some traffic coming head on at a narrow part of the road. Being the good bloke he is he pulled right over to make room to pass. It didn't look soft but the side of the road was actually really wet sloppy mud underneath and in the blink of an eye the left wheels were seriously bogged and we weren't going anywhere. Luckely/ embarrassingly there were soon plenty of people lined up and giving advice and offers of help (the bloke heading the opposite way stopped to help too so we had the road blocked till we were out) I'm deeply ashamed to say that for the first time in its life our Patrol had to get snatched out of a bog by a Toyota. (Dad I know you'll be gracious about that and won't rub it in at ALL will you)

Anyway, back on track again and we back at Halls Creek for a top up. Tonight we'll be a Wolfe Creek for our list night in WA (yikes!!) as we head across the Tanami towards Alice Springs.

Broome, Middle Lagoon and 80 Mile Beach.

After Derby we spent 4 nights at Cable Beach Caravan Park in Broome. This was about 3 night too long for Daz and I but we just had to suck it up as we had a few running repairs that needed our attention. After the Munja Track the remaining Cooper STT tyres were absolutely wrecked so we got them replaced as well as tried to hunt down new shockies for the trailer. We failed at this mission because the size of the shockies on our camper are really unusual (so it turns out) so we decided that we’d make do with the existing ones (have a little faith in Dazza Coight’s welding) to hopefully get us back home. We also lashed out and bought a laptop as we were fed up with trying to do things on smart phones and tablets that are still really limited (we need a new laptop for home anyway) – did you notice that the blogs suddenly look a whole lot better? This is thanks to the laptop. Other than that it was little things that we need such as tools and groceries etc.

While Broome itself is a pretty nice place, unfortunately Cable Beach Caravan Park made it a pretty unpleasant experience by gouging us for $60 per night for a TINY camp sight right next to a pool with a waterfall that went all freakin night, and filled up with old women doing aqua aerobics at 7am to Boney M music!! Argh!!  Also it was really cold when we were a Broome (Yeah I can hear you southerners saying “poor you”) and since there was nothing but shade and you couldn’t light a fire there we spent much of the time f.f.f. freezing our butts off. Also for some reason no one in this place would talk to each other or even look you in the eye! Really weird…..we hated the place and were happy to get out of there.

On the last night before we left we headed over to Cable Beach and went on a camel ride. While Matilda was a little nervous to begin with we soon had her up on a camel and she was loving it. We did a sunset ride so got to watch the sun going down over beautiful Cable Beach while plodding along on our camels and listening to the kids speculate about the intricacies of how the poo bags on the camels work…just beautiful!

Camel Rides on Cable Beach

Next day we headed up to Middle Lagoon (part of Cape Leveque). The road turns into red bulldust after a while so of course is corrugated in places and in one spot has what I can only describe as corrugations that are about 2 meters from crest to crest. So instead of getting the usual judders the car starts to bounce if you drive it too fast.  But also the road is really wide – maybe 3 times the width of a normal road and is kind of dug down so it’s like you driving along a wide creek bed made of bulldust.

When we got to Middle Lagoon we were given a choice of a few places to camp. One spot was on top of the sand dunes with beautiful views over the ocean. The drawback was that there was no shade and you had to slot in between other caravans – right next to them like at Cable Beach….no thanks. We kept looking and found a great spot that had plenty of space, shade, ocean views and most importantly……isolation. The drawback of this place? The ground was soft white sand – great for the kids to play in – also great to sink the patrol into up to the axle….which we did right away! The problem here was that we needed to turn around to position the camper but this meant chucking a tight U-ey. In the confined space and fine sand the front wheels turned into ploughs and down we went. When deflating the tyres and trying to drive out failed we unhooked the trailer and were able to drive the truck out…..hmmm but what about the trailer? This was going to be difficult and we were both a bit stumped. The best option (of a bad bunch) was to attempt to winch the trailer towards the truck at a 90 degree angle. We made a ramp for the jockey wheel but when we started winching all that happened was that the jockey wheel sunk in the sand and then got bent out of shape. Really at our wits end we had to jack up the front of the trailer, rest it on a spare tyre, fill in the sand, jack up the front again, fill in more sand, reposition the tyre…..and so on until the front of the trailer was high enough to hook back on the truck on a 90 degree angle and try again to drive it out…..hurruh! it worked! The kids wasted no time in jumping in the holes left by the tyres and wallowing in it like pigs in mud!

Bogged at Middle Lagoon

Anyway with a now damaged jockey wheel we set up camp and (at long last) got a campfire going. Daz spent a large portion of the next day trying to bend the jockey wheel back into place and he thought he did a pretty good job of (just ask him!).

Middle Lagoon

We spent the next few days swimming, fishing, collecting shells, and husking green coconuts and mixing the milk with rum. We even made coconut shell cups and sipped rum and coconut milk from them as we swung in the hammock and admired the view. Forget Hawaii….Middle Lagoon is the spot! Daz and Jess landed a few nice whiting off the beach and Jess almost landed a decent Golden Trevally after fighting it of a good few minutes and getting it to within about 3 m of the shore. She absolutely loves fishing!

Nat - Champion Coconut Shucker!

80 Mile Beach

Regretfully after 4 days we left Middle Lagoon and headed down to 80 mile beach (south of Broome). This beach is famous for its sea shells and they’re not wrong. We drove along the beach for about 15 km and Daz tried to fish while the Kids and Nat collected shells. By the end of the day we had no fish but two buckets full of sea shells – many of them as big as your fist. Frustratingly there are huge chunks of shells that, if unbroken would be bigger than your head….but they were all broken. It Didn’t matter – as it is we’re hard pressed fitting in the shells we collected (having  to bring enough home for the kids to give one shell to each school friend was undoubtedly cheaper than buying presents but did give us some packing challenges!) 80 Mile beach also boasted absolutely magnificent sunsets – especially when the tide is out…check it out:

Sunset at 80 Mile Beach

After 2 nights at 80 Mile Beach we packed up to head for Broome again. Of course it was Nat who narrowly escaped getting her foot mangled when the jockey wheel collapsed while she was hooking on the trailer (nice one Dazza Coight) but luckily no harm was done other than scaring the bejesus out of Nat. We headed back towards Broome and found a trailer repair place that sold us a new jockey wheel and then we headed out of town about 30km to stay at a different caravan park. While not as beautiful as Cable beach the facilities here are great , the campsites large, and we met some really nice people from the sunshine coast!      

 Next day we stocked up on groceries, and then went to the Malcolm Douglas Wilderness Park. I was surprised by how good this was! We got to cuddle snakes and baby crocodiles and watch from up close as they fed some bloody big salties (some were about 5 m long) with names like ‘Maniac’, ‘Bullet’, ‘One eye’ and ‘Santa’. It was great.

Jessica with a Worma Python

Nat & Matilda cuddle the Worma Python

Nat chowing down on a croc

A Croc called 'Bullet'

Bullet getting fed

The eye of the Bullet

After that we went into Broome and watched the phenomenon called ‘Stairway to the Moon’. This is when the moon rises above the tidal flats and lights up the tidal flats. It’s really beautiful…but I think that it might be somewhat ‘over-marketed’ given that the caravan parks in Broome seem to overflow when the conditions are right. After having dinner at a café to watch the moonrise we went back to camp to the news that QLD had just won another State of Origin! Hooray! (BTW if you go for the blues and think no one cares about the State of Origin apart from QLD or NSW you’d be wrong. The Western Australians take it pretty seriously too – I have no idea why)

Anyway – after a broken night (thanks to Jessica’s vomiting stint) we packed our bags and finally turned out heads east again. From here on we’re heading for home….but first things first. Next  Stop Winjana Gorge, Tunnel Creek and the Bungle Bungles.