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.

We got away by 8am, not 7.30, but that was still pretty good. It was a 20min drive back along the Gibb River Road to the turnoff to Emma Gorge, then just a short drive to the carpark. There is a ‘resort’ with accomodation at the entrance to Emma Gorge. Some people stay here, rather than at ‘the station’.
We parked and were ready to start the walk by about 8.30. It was already feeling warm. It took about an hour to walk all the way into the gorge to the waterfall and swimming hole. The walk was a bit scrambly at times, over rocks a lot. It was not as pretty as El Questro Gorge walk, but the swimming hole at the end was lovely and made it worth the walk. There is a tall sheer cliff face which is in a semicircle shape around the waterhole. At this time of year the waterfall is only fairly small, but I can imagine it pouring down in the wet season. All of us except Michael went for a swim (too cold for Michael). Lauren and Sam swam to under the waterfall (it was very deep here) and said the droplets of water were like pinpricks, they were falling so fast. As we were getting out of the main swimming area, a lovely older couple said to us “We can see your kids are having such a great time, so we just wanted to tell you about a nice ‘spa’ area tucked away behind those rocks – its nice and warm over there”. We thanked them and went to discover the thermal area – we found it and enjoyed sitting there for a while. We then warmed up in the sun and changed back into our walking gear ready for the walk out. A couple of stops along the way for drinks and lollies/biscuits helped everyone get back OK (although Bethany needed a piggy back just for the last 5 mins – she had done magnificently well to do what she did). It was about 12noon when we got back to the car, and we were glad to be in the air-conditioning.

We ate our sandwiches for lunch as we drove towards Wyndham. We had to continue backtracking along the Gibb River Road back to the Great Northern Hwy and then turn left to head north towards Wyndham. It was about a 30min drive then. Everyone was still a bit hungry and we had decided we would find a cafe at Wyndham to have a milkshake and maybe a muffin or something.

We drove into Wyndham about 1pm. There was a big croc at the entrance to the town. The main thing we wanted to do here was see the Five Rivers Lookout, but thought there may be some other things to do also. We found the information centre and I went in to get a map and find out some information on things to do. The port area was a little further north than the main part of the town. We decided to drive there and see if we could find a cafe there. We walked down the main road of the port area and found a shop that sold souvenirs – we asked them if there was a cafe, but were informed “No sorry – there is only the pub”. There was a small museum at the port area, which could have been interesting, but the kids weren’t keen, so I thought it best we just head back to the main area and find a cafe. We were told there was the Five Rivers Cafe on the main road which should be open until 3pm. We found this cafe just after 2pm and it had just closed! And this was a week day. It was a sign of how small and isolated the town was and how it did not benefit from tourists passing through – only those who wanted to make the trek to the end of the road. We continued our search for a place to buy a drink and we eventually found ‘Lu- Lu’s Asian restaurant’ – it only had hot food but at least it had some takeaway milkshakes. We enjoyed these and got some muffins out of the freezer from the caravan to eat.

We then drove to the base of the hill where the lookout was. We had been told we couldn’t take the caravan up the hill because it was quite steep and had some tight corners. But there was a large area were we could leave it. This we did and then drove up the hill. It was a great view from the top, looking out over the Cambridge Gulf. This is a deep gulf that comes south from the Timor Sea and where 5 rivers start. Those 5 rivers are the Ord heading south-east, the Durack heading north-west, the ? heading west, the Pentecost and ? heading south-west.

We were all fairly tired so decided just to head straight back to Kununurra, rather than taking the 50km detour to see the prison boab tree. There is another one near Derby which we might try to see.

So we drove the hour back to Kununurra and went back to the Kimberleyland Van Park. We asked if there was a site close to the pool, and we were fortunate to get a spot close to the pool, the playground and the amenities. It was great. The kids were keen for a swim, so I took them over to the pool while Michael set up the caravan and started to get dinner ready. We had showers, then dinner and then were all ready for an early night again.

El Questro Wilderness Park is about 130km west of Kununurra along the Gibb River Road. It used to be a privately run station, but has now opened itself up to tourism, having accommodation at the homestead or camping area and running guided tours or allowing for selfguided tours to the many gorges and waterholes and rivers and lookouts. It is 1 million acres in size. We had heard of it from a few friends as a good place to visit and to stay overnight. So we decided to go and stay there 1 or 2 nights rather than doing it as a day trip from Kununurra.

It was Saturday by this stage and there were markets on at Kununurra on a Sat morning from 8am, which I said I’d like to go to before we headed off. I was up early with the younger girls anyway, so had most things done by 8am. It turned out that Michael, I, Hannah and Beth all went to the markets while Lauren and Sam stayed home and read/watched a movie. We were back bys 9.30 and packed up ready to leave the van park by 10am.

We had a little detour on the way as we missed the turn onto the Gibb River Road and were heading towards Wyndam a little while before we realised. Then we got back on track and were at El Questro Station by about midday. We checked in and set up and then proceeded to get some lunch. It was a very hot day again (around 36 degrees) and, because El Questro campsite was all unpowered, we couldn’t use the A/C – oh no! We struggled through the chores and then headed for a swim at the Pentecost River beside the campsite. I was very happy to go in also. The kids found a deep area where there was a tree with spreading branches overhanging the water. This was just perfect for adventurous kids – climb out along the branch and jump into the water. Sam could have done that for hours. Lauren and Hannah joined in for a bit, but also played some other games with Bethany and so on. They had a ball and I had a nice relax in the water and then warming up again on the sand bank. We went back to the caravan for a snack and a rest and then Michael took them for another swim before showers, dinner and to bed – not before deciding what walks and swimming spots we were going to visit tomorrow. We were going to have to start early to do any walking before it got too hot. So we decided to try to be ready to leave the van by 7.30am and do the El Questro Gorge walk and then Zebedee Springs in the morning.

So we did get away around 7.30 the next morning. We all had our swimmers on under our clothes as there was a swimming hole at both spots. It was a 15 min drive to the start of El Questro Gorge walk. The information had said about 1 hour walk to the halfway pool (which was as far as we were going to go) along a rainforest area by the creek. This is one of the reasons we had chosen this walk – it would be cool along the way. And we weren’t disappointed – it was a lovely walk beside a cool creek within the gorge – very pretty. It took us about 50mins to reach the halfway pool and there we enjoyed a lovely cool swim. We were then refreshed for the walk back. We then drove 5 mins down the road to the Zebedee Springs carpark. Zebedee Springs is a thermal springs and it is only open to the public from 7am until 12 noon. It is closed in the afternoon for private tour groups. We arrived at the carpark at 10.45am and it was only a 5min walk to the springs, so we would have plenty of time for a swim. They were fairly crowded but we were able to find a spot to sit and soak – it was lovely! There were a series of little pools as the water cascaded down the rocks and then there was a larger pool at the bottom where the kids could move around a bit more. We stayed about an hour and then headed back to the car and then back to the van, having enjoyed our morning of walks and swims.

We had lunch, a short rest and then the kids were keen to have another swim in the Pentecost River beside the campground. So they swam, had a break for some afternoon tea and a play and then swam again – 4 swims in a day. Then all of us except Lauren and Bethany (who wanted to just rest) went for a short drive to a lookout as the sun set.

Then we came back for a BBQ dinner. We had eaten every meal, except breakfast outside whilst at El Questro because it was cooler outside. We made plans for the next day – we were going to try to be packed up and away by 7.30am again so that we could do the Emma Gorge walk on our way out of El Questro, once again before it got too hot. So we all got to bed reasonably early.

We had read that triple J tours do great informative cruises on Lake Argyle (and also up the Ord River). We decided to do the 2 hr morning cruise, feeling that was long enough for the kids. We weren’t disappointed. It was a fantastic cruise with a very friendly and informative tour guide, Graeme.

We had to leave the van park at 7.45am for the 50min drive to Lake Argyle, southeast of Kununurra. We needed to be at the Lake argyle Tourist Park by 9am. We were there in plenty of time and had a look around at some of the maps and things in the office area. We then got on the bus which took as the short drive to the boat ramp and got on the boat called the ‘Kimberley Durack’. The boat was much more roomy than the smaller ones we had gone on at the Daintree. It was actually a catamaran and it had a toilet on board and also a servery area for tea and coffee and homemade morning tea biscuits and slice. There were eskies filled with soft drinks and juices also for the kids to have whenever they liked – the kids loved that idea!

The boat could actually go quite fast too. We sometimes travelled slowly and looked at things on the shoreline, and we sometimes travelled quite fast to cover the long distances.

On returning back to the tourist park and to our car, we drove the short distance to the Durack Homestead museum. The Duracks had been a pioneering family in this area of Australia and their homestead was on the grassy plains which were going to be covered in water once Lake Argyle started filling. It was thought they would have a couple of years to move before the lake got that big, but it filled up quicker than expected. A group of people were able to move the house (a stone house) but not any other buildings from the homestead. It was perfectly restored in a different location near the lake as a museum and testimony to this family. It was interesting to look through.

We then drove back to Kununurra and our van (which was hot!), put on the aircon, and rested a while before a swim and then an early dinner. The younger girls were still trying to adjust to the new time zone, so were very tired by evening.