We left the van park around 8am and commenced the drive. Lauren had planned for us to do some travel games in the car today. So we did some games like ‘celebrity head’, ‘alphabet sayings’, and the familiar ‘I spy’. It was a fun change from the audio books or other things. We arrived at the carpark for Windjana Gorge in what seemed like a short while.
We checked the information board for the walks. The main walk along the gorge was 6km return but since it was so hot again today, and we were all feeling tired from the heat, we decided we would just walk as far as we wanted to and then turn back. The first part of the walk was fairly shaded with lots of trees along the bank of the river. We had read that we should see lots of freshwater crocs here and it didn’t take long to see them – some in the water and some on the banks. They are not aggressive so long as they are not provoked, so we felt pretty safe walking within a couple of metres of them on the bank. The other animal we had read we would see is the archer fish in the water – a striped fish. Once again, we didn’t have to go far to see these – many groups of them swimming close in to the bank. We ended up only walking about 200m to a section where the track started to be more out in the open (and in the heat), before deciding to turn back. We had seen the crocs and the fish and the river winding through the gorge, and we were happy with that. We headed back to the car.
We drove the short distance further along to Tunnel Creek. This was somewhere Sam in particular was looking forward to visiting. We had been re-reading the book ‘Are We There Yet?’ and the family in that book had visited Tunnel Creek – where you waded through water in a subterranean tunnel – and Sam liked the sound of this. I wasn’t so sure (never liked the idea of wading through water you can’t see through). But I would see how my courage held up once we got there. We had read to be prepared with torches and shoes that can get wet (and possibly a change of clothes). The children all had their head torches which they had received last Christmas for presents. Michael and I shared a hand held torch. We all had reef shoes or thongs. It wasn’t far from the carpark to the tunnel entrance – and it was so much cooler in he tunnel! There was still a fair bit of water in the tunnel, even though it was late in the dry season. However it only went to knee height not waist height (for adults anyway). So my courage held up and I was OK to walk through the water along the tunnel – especially since there were islands of dry ground interspersed in the water. I did hold on tightly to Michael though. The kids were fine – no worries there. In the darkest parts of the tunnel we definitely needed the torches. Halfway along, there was a natural roof collapse in the tunnel and so it became light again. At this point we both saw and heard the bats on the roof and had quite a display of a ‘free flight bat show’ as Sam said. We enjoyed watching this for a while, as well as taking note of the stalactites on the roof. We retraced our steps back to the beginning of the tunnel and out again into the heat. We put the car air-con on full blast and had our lunch. Then we headed back towards Derby.
We played some more travel games on the way home. We got back mid-afternoon and let the kids watch a movie while Michael and I had some down time. Then Hannah and I took a bike ride to the town centre to the Chinese restaurant and ordered some takeaway for dinner. It was Father’s Day and I’d decided we would do chinese takeaway for dinner. It was a very nice change.