Well, we didn’t leave the van park until 8.45am. Then we needed to do a few short jobs in Kununurra still – go back to the mechanic with our car’s log book for them to log the service, fill up with petrol, and go to a shop to buy a water jerry can ( in my reading the previous night I had read that the water at the campgrounds is bore water and needs boiling before safe to drink – so we wanted to take lots of water. Then we were about 15 mins out of Kununurra, Michael was concerned about the oil pressure gauge being high and he wanted to go back to the mechanic, so we turned around. We actually drove to the Toyota dealer in Kununurra and Michael spoke to them about it – he found out that the gauge is not accurate and it wasn’t a problem (a mechanic came over a did a quick check of the oil) but to definitely change the oil and oil filter more often out here. So after this delay, it was about 9.45 before we were leaving Kununurra – I didn’t know whether we’d still be able to do one walk late this afternoon or whether we would run out of time – would have to see.

It was a 2hr drive to the first town/locality along the hwy – Turkey Creek – or Warmun as the aborigines call it. It is mainly an aboriginal community. We didn’t stop there. It was then another half an hour to the turnoff to Purnululu NP. We came to the turnoff, which is at Mabel Downs Station, and drove the 5km in to where the Bungle Bungles Caravan Park is located. It is a very basic and sparse caravan park. We booked in to leave our caravan locked up there tonight and then to stay at a powered site the following night. I had planned for us to have hot dogs for lunch at the van before we left to drive in to the NP. Michael went to set up the generator so I could use the microwave oven and that’s when we realised we didn’t have the caravan electrical lead – it must have accidentally been left back at the Kununurra van park as we were hurrying to do our morning pack up. We went back to the office to ask if they had a spare one we could borrow until we could buy a new one – luckily they did. We eventually got through lunch and finished packing the last minute refrigerator items in the esky we were taking in the car. It was another very hot day, so doing all these jobs in the heat tends to take its toll a bit more. Finally by about 2pm, we were ready to leave the van and set off along the 4WD Sandy Creek Track in to the NP.

The information I had read said that it was 58km from the turnoff to the visitors centre of the NP, however it was slow going so could take 2-2.5 hrs. Perhaps they’ve improved the road since that website was written, because it only took us 1.5 hrs to reach the visitors centre. We had a little while there booking in to the campsite and getting some advice on walks etc. It was another 20mins to the campsite (we stayed at the one in the southern end). So it was after 4pm when we reached the campsite – there was not going to be enough time to do a walk today. So we might not be able to do all the walks I had hoped to do before it gets too hot tomorrow. Oh well.

We set up the tent and set of the back of the car for sleeping, then the kids all went for a walk around the campsite for 15mins or so while Michael and I sat down and had a relax together.

Then while I had a game of Happy Families with all the kids, Michael started cooking the sausages on the portable BBQ. We ate our dinner, washed up from the billy we boiled on the fire, and then decided we needed an early night. So off to bed.

All the kids slept quite well. Michael and I slept better than we thought we would, although there wasn’t much padding on the floor of the tent so that made it less comfortable. We were awake at about 5.45am and got up to have breakfast. We started the fire again so we could boil water for a cuppa. We had to then pack up all the sleeping bags, the tent and pack everything back into the car. We were done and ready to go by 7.30am.

We drove to the carpark for the walks on the southern end – called Picanniny Creek carpark. The last 10 mins of the drive we could start to see the domes for which the Bungle Bungles are known. They were amazing to look at. There were 4 walks here – the Cathedral Gorge, the Dome walk, Picanniny Creek walk and the sunset lookout walk. We decided just to do the Cathedral Gorge walk (about an hour return) and the Dome walk (a 15min detour loop off the gorge walk). It was already quite hot and only around 8am. The first part of the walk was mostly in the sun, but once we got further into the gorge it was nice and shady. The Dome walk obviously took us amongst some of the domes. They are orange and black striped (like bee-hives). The reason for these colours is that the orange is the sandstone which gets the rusted iron on it, and the black is ? which has a black algae which attaches to it. The Cathedral Gorge is so named because of the amphitheatre-like structure of the walls at the end of the gorge. A tour group arrived at the area about 5 mins after we did, and a group of 4 of them became a choir and gave a ‘recital’ – they sang ‘Waltzing Matilda’ and ‘Advance Australia Fair’ – I took some video. We walked back to the carpark then, stopping several times for a drink as it was quite hot.

We then planned to drive the half hour drive to the northern end of the park which had some more walks. This top end didn’t have the domes – it had the sheer cliff face walls and gorges and chasms. The most popular walk in the north end was Echidna Chasm which took you into an area which was created by a fault-line opening up a cliff face. It was so narrow in parts that you could easily touch the walls on both sides. This rock was different to the striated orange and black rock of the domes. This one was called conglomerate rock and had lots of small rocks within the sandstone. Although we were walking in the middle of the day, inside the chasm was shady and cool – it was just the first few hundred metres in the sun that was a killer. But we got back to the car and recovered in the airconditioning.

That was all the walks we were doing today, but there was one other activity we had decided to do that day – go for a helicopter flight over the Bungle Bungles – we decided to splash out to do this. So we drove to the airstrip area. We had actually called in here in the morning and worked out a time with the pilots. We were scheduled for 3.15. There would be 3 of us in each of 2 helicopters, and it would be a 30min flight. In one helicopter was Sam (next to the pilot), Hannah and myself. In the other was Lauren (next to the pilot), Michael and Bethany. Michael had the video camera and took lots of video footage. The doors were off to give a better view – it was amazing. Michael and I both had a firm hold of the younger girl next to us, but we all had seat belts on. We saw the high plateaus and gorges in the northern section of the park and the fascinating domes in the southern section. It was the first time in a helicopter for all of us, except Michael, and we all thoroughly enjoyed it.

It was now 4pm and we commenced the drive back to the caravan park. We got back around 6pm, unlocked the van, moved it to the powered site, and heated up one of our frozen dinners. We ate a late dinner, put the kids to bed, had a shower to wash off the sweat from the day, and fell into bed ourselves after 2 long but fulfilling days.

We had booked our car in for a regular service today (Tues), so we planned to have a rest day, mainly staying around the van park. This was good after the last few busy days. Lauren, especially, was very thankful for a chance to sleep in. The other 3 kids were awake early as usual, and so was I. Michael would have liked a sleepin, but wanted to get the car to the mechanic early, so that it would be ready earlier. The mechanic opened at 7am. He left the van park around 7, dropped the car off and had one of the workers drop him back to the van park (Kununurra is not that big, so it was not a problem to drop people anywhere).

I decided the kids should do some schoolwork today (inward groans from Mum and Dad and outward groans from the kids). I started this with the 3 who were awake while Michael was gone. Michael helped a bit when he got back, and then Michael and Sam walked into town to do some grocery shopping, as we were very depleted on our food stores. They got just the priority grocery items as they had to walk back with them. We decided we would do a bigger shop in the afternoon when we had the car again. We continued with schoolwork for most of the morning ( it took some of the children longer than it should have). They had ‘recess’ on the playground near our caravan. Then they had a short swim as a reward once they were finished. We then had some nachos for lunch – yum. Everyone had a rest time after lunch, reading books or listening to books and watching a short movie. Then Michael and I decided we should do some planning for our trip into the Bungle Bungles the next 2 days. We had briefly discussed it when we first arrived at Kununurra and had planned out the things we were going to do on different days. We knew we couldn’t take the caravan on the 4WD track into the Purnululu NP, so it was either go in and out in one day, or stay overnight in something other than the caravan. There is a camp area with safari-style tents already setup, but when we looked into this, it was going to be hideously expensive. We had brought one of our 3man tents with us. We thought maybe we could buy another inexpensive one, and just take the 2 tents in. Then Lauren and Sam said they would be happy to sleep in the back of the car, and we decided Hannah and Beth would fit in the tent with Michael and I. So we decided to take this approach.

I spent a half hour or so working out what we would need in the way of food for the day and a bit in the Bungle Bungles and then the next couple of days before we reached Derby. Then I dropped Michael and the kids off at the swim beach area at Lake Kununurra, and went and did the shopping. I picked them up after they’d had a nice swim and we all went back to the van park for showers, unpacking groceries and cooking dinner – hamburgers. The kids were a great help with all this. We had dinner and got the kids to bed, then I started to read up on the walks to do at the Bungle Bungles and started to write a list of all the things we’d need to pack in the car to take in with us. It was a bit more last minute planning than I usually do for this sort of thing, but since we’d been travelling for about 10 weeks now, I thought the kids were getting pretty good at being flexible if I’d forgotten anything – and it wasn’t like there would be no-one else in there. I packed as much of the food as I could that night and had the list ready to pack the remainder of things in the morning. We were hoping to leave the van park by 8am, so it was going to be another early start.