The younger girls were awake around 5.30am local time. It was quite light outside already and the birds were becoming noisy. They rested in bed for a bit longer but then I got up with them. Sam also got up fairly soon after. We all had breakfast and then Sam suggested he take the 2 younger girls over to the playground at the park across the road. I was happy for him to do this and it gave me a bit of quiet time before I prompted Michael and Lauren to get up, so we could get going to do a bushwalk early.

We left the van park a bit before 8am and drove the 10mins to Mirima NP, right on the edge of Kununurra. This NP is known as the mini bungle bungles, because it has the same beehive shaped domes as the real bungle bungles, just a smaller version. We did the main walk up to the lookout where we could see over the domes and also over the town. It was very hot walking, even at 9am and we were glad we didn’t leave it any later. All the kids were great troupers though and persevered (with the help of some snake lollies every now and then – and lots of water of course). We then headed straight back to the van to sit in the airconditioning for a while and get our strength back.

Michael took the kids over to the pool (which we were glad was covered). Then we had lunch and a rest. Then it was another swim. Then we went for a drive to the Diversion Dam wall just west of Kununurra. This is all part of the Ord River irrigation project, whereby they damned the mighty Ord River and created Lake Argyle to be able to have a permanent water supply for farming in the area. The diversion dam near Kununurra is the smaller dam wall. On the upstream area from the dam wall is Lake Kununurra (really just a section of the Ord River). It has a swimming area where they do croc checks and feel that the chance of saltwater crocs is minimal. We had a look around here, but didn’t have our swimmers with us, so didn’t swim.

Our last stop on the drive was at Kelly’s Knob lookout – at a hill within Kununurra. We enjoyed the views.

Then it was back to the van to prepare dinner and the usual night time routine.

Victoria River area is a beautiful spot. It would have been nice to explore it a bit more, but we felt we needed to keep going to get to Kununurra at a reasonable time today. But even just the drive through the Gregory NP was lovely. Many red cliff faces and amazing mountainous scenery to view. I decided not to start the kids on schoolwork straight away that day, so that I could just sit and enjoy the scenery for a while. I took some video while we were driving.

We got to Timber Creek about an hour on, and stopped at a shaded grassy area near the roadhouse to have morning tea. If we felt that it hadn’t been warm enough on our travels yet, that was certainly changing now – big time. It was well over 30degrees that day – there was definitely no standing in the sun. Timber Creek was also close to the Victoria River and we drove down a side road to get a view of the river and take some photos – but were then glad to be back in the air conditioned car. We continued on the further 250km to Kununurra.

We had forgotten about the fruit and vegetable quarantine going over into WA until a couple at the caravan park that morning had asked us which way we were travelling – they had wanted to give away some fruit they had, rather than throw it out. I realised that we still had quite a bit of fruit and veg that we wouldn’t be able to use up that day. We ate as much as we could for morning tea and lunch that day, but still had a bit when we got to the border. Before going to the quarantine station, we stopped to have our photo at the WA border sign (defying the heat again as we stepped out of the car). We then drove over to the quarantine station, which at least was under shelter. We found out that we also couldn’t take honey over the border – so had to give up our almost full honey jar plus the completely full spare. I had thrown out fruit already, but wasn’t sure about veg. The quarantine officer came into the van to check our fridge and pantry. I found out we could keep sweet potato and mushrooms bought at the shop. We could also keep carrots as long as we cut off the heads (which we then did). The officer said there are about 100 diseases that they are trying to keep out of WA. He admitted that they know they won’t be able to keep them out forever, but the longer they do, the better. He also reminded us we needed to turn our clocks back an hour and a half now. So it went from 2pm to 12.30pm as we crossed over.

It was then only another 50km to Kununurra. We only came into 3G range about 5 mins out of Kununurra, so i didn’t have much time to research caravan parks. But we ended up at a park near the Lily Pond Lagoon called Kimberleyland. It suited us fine. We set up quickly in the stifling heat and put the aircon on in the van as soon as we were hooked up to power. Then stayed in the cool for a little while. I then took the kids over to the pool, while Michael went and saw the Toyota dealer (about having the car serviced) and picked up some groceries.

For dinner that night I cooked up the cherapin we had caught at Katherine and had them as an aside to a prawn stir fry. We were all a bit disappointed in how little ‘meat’ there was for the effort put in to catching them. We would have had to improve our hunting techniques to survive like the aborigines!

We put the kids to bed a little later than their usual bedtime as we had to adjust to the time change. We knew they’d be waking up early for local time, but thought this would be a good thing, since we wanted to get out and do some sightseeing before the main heat of the day.

Well we stayed at Katherine for just on a week and felt much more rested afterwards, and ready to keep travelling. We didn’t do any sight-seeing in that time, and the only touristy place we visited was the hot springs because they were such a lovely place to swim each day.

It was great to see my sister, Liz, and for the kids to catch up with their Aunty Liz. Although she had to work during the day for the first 3 days we were there, we really enjoyed having the evening meal with her and Michael and I sitting up late talking with her. There was one night her and Michael got into a really good discussion which covered all sorts of topics – I excused myself at 11.00pm to go to bed, and I found out the next day Michael and Liz had kept talking until 2am – they were obviously enjoying the conversation! On the Saturday Liz spent the day with us, doing her own usual chores while we did a big cook up of biscuits and slice, and then taking us cherapin pot fishing in the afternoon at the local river site. Sunday, she came with us in the morning to a Teddy Bears Picnic community event (part of the Katherine festival) and then headed off to Darwin where she had previously booked some committments for  Sunday afternoon and Monday ( an accrued day off work).  She was happy for us to stay on at her house a bit longer. We did this, as we still needed to attend to a few jobs on the Monday when the shops were open again. We left just after lunch on the Tuesday.

Some of the things we did in Katherine were:
– the kids rode their bikes around the property where Liz lived – they found a spot down near a dry creek bed where they made a ‘fort’.
– we downloaded some new movies from  a set one of Liz’s friends had loaned her – so the kids watched some new movies over ‘rest time’.
– we did lots of washing and gave the caravan a good clean out.
– we baked a whole lot of biscuits while we had access to an oven and froze some.
– we cooked a whole lot more dinners to freeze – ended up with about 10 more frozen dinners which will be very handy. I put them in vacuum seal ziplock bags so they don’t take up much room. Carrying the extra camping freezer for this reason has been a good idea.
– we did some schoolwork for an hour or so on a couple of the days.
– we went swimming at the hot springs every afternoon except one – this was a favourite with all of us as it got quite warm by the afternoons and this was a lovely way to refresh. Even though they were ‘hot springs’ they were actually just lukewarm in the section where we swam (and most people swam) and because it was a lovely shaded area, it was just the right temperature – even for Michael (who only swims when the temperature is over 30 degrees).
– Sam, Hannah and I went fishing at a local spot Liz told us about – only caught snags – found out that evening when talking to Liz that we were using the wrong technique. In that area, we needed to use lures and keep the line moving rather than let it sink to the bottom where there were lots of rocks – we still have lots to learn about fishing!
– then Liz took us to another spot to put the cherapin pots in ( cherapin are a bit like prawns) – we caught 2 overnight on the first night, then  4 on the second night. The kids really enjoyed this.  I bought some prawns with my next grocery shop and thought we could add the cherapin to the prawns with a stir fry – will do that tonight or tomorrow night.
– we went to a community event on the Sunday in the grounds of the Katherine museum. It was a teddy bear’s picnic. Hannah and Beth took their teddies and had cuddles with the dressed up teddies. They had faces painted and went on a jumping castle and did some craft things. There wasn’t as much to do for the older kids, but we relaxed and had a sausage sizzle lunch there.

All in all, a good week and on Tuesday 21st August, we set off again, just driving 2 hours to stay at Victoria River roadhouse caravan park that night.