Kununarra

We are now settled in Kununarra & finally have vegies & fruit again!  

Not so with the red & white wine.    Our supplies are slowly dwindling now & to purchase alcohol in Kununarra is quite an event.    You can only purchase wine between 5 & 8pm and only 2 bottles per person per day!!   So at 5pm with all the other tourists we went to purchase our 2 bottles.   Tony picked out 2 reds & 2 whites for me & to pay for our wines we had to queue through the shop, along the supermarket (where the food ckeck-outs are) into the mall nearly back to where we parked the car.   In the photo if you look really closely you can see me at the end of the line talking to the other tourists!!!   The sad part is, at 5pm we should have been back at camp enjoying our Happy Hour as it gets dark here about 5:15pm....

Interesting though..... there were only tourist on this line getting their 2 bottles & no indigineous people anywhere.    Evidently they pay $15 for a taxi to drive them around the corner to the Drive-In Bottle Shop to purchase their alcohol & then on the next one.    Taxi drivers are evidently allowed to do this!   So much for trying to help them!

Tony is here at the Pump House Station Restaurant enjoying a coffee on the river.   He is pointing to his new hair cut....   we both tried out a hairdresser living here in the park......
$15 for mens hair/ $20 for women

I was a little nervous, but thought it would grow back before I got home, but I was very happy with the result (& the price!)






After a little retail therapy visiting The Zebra Rock Shop, Sandalwood Factory & a few Nic Nac Shops we enjoyed a lovely sunset meal at the Pump House Station Restaurant overlooking the river.

 The sunset was spectacular as were the large mozzies that bit us.............. but the meal was great!

Our day at El Questro & Emma Gorge

After much deliberation talking to other tourist & Information Centres we were still not sure whether take our van into this area.    The Gibb River Road is quite a rugged 4WD only road with lots of corrugations and a few river crossings.    We decided it was easier to do a full day visiting Emma Gorge and El Questro and maybe a 4WD track while we were there.

Check out the small video below of the first 20kms of rough corrugations along the first part of Gibb River Road!

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First stop was Emma Gorge after battling the rough corrugations.   More mountain goat climbing over rocks and bolders to get there.   Here  I am at the first rock pool along the way with more bolders to tackle from here.... 

Emma Gorge had a beautiful rockpool at the bottom of the falls which we were able to swim in but had to keep moving though to the Zebedee Thermal Springs as they closed at 12 noon to the public so the tourist buses could use them privately!    We were lucky we left early for this walk as on the way back we passed quite a few tourist heading up for a swim!!

Zebedee Thermal Springs was relaxing after our hike up to Emma Gorge.   The temperature was around 30 deg in the water so quite warm & so clear you could see everything on the bottom of the river.






Saddleback Ridge was a 4WD track for experienced 4W drivers only, which we did from El Questro.  Tony hadn't driven on many 4WD tracks for some time so I was a little nervy taking off!   We drove through a rocky river bed, up a steep, rugged, narrow track along the top of this ridge to some spectacular views at the lookout.  The lookout is at the very peak of the hill in this photo.  Dean & Jude you would have loved this drive!  

This is what we saw quite a bit along the Gibb River Road - the dust was incredible & seeing how dusty & rugged the roads were at El Questro we were glad we decided to leave our van back at camp in Kununarra.  We did see quite a few large vans challenging the roads into camp & wandered how they actually managed to get in without doing any damage! 

This is a small video of us crossing the Pentacose River to get into El Questro.    As we were driving through we heard other people who had just crossed the river talking on their UHF about us.....They recognised our WILKS1 number plate and said they had seen us quite a few times in various parks.... they got a shock when we spoke back to them over the radio.    Tony & I had nicknames for our UHF given to us by other travellers...........Tony (forward scout) & me (stalker)     Will let you know why when we get back!