Having had such a fun time with the Perry’s on the first half of the Gibb, we managed to tee up another get-together as they were returning from the Bungle Bungles before heading further north to Darwin. Rendezvous point, Lake Argyle. Lake Argyle is Western Australia’s largest and Australia’s second largest freshwater man-made reservoir by volume. The main draw of this area is getting the Insta pic in the infinity pool and the BBQ boat!

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Again, it was another caravan park stay. Once booked in, Alex came out with a fluorescent wrist band with ‘Guest VIP’ all over it. Oh, were there secret rides I was going to be allowed on, were butlers going to spring out from behind the trees with canapes and bubbles? No, it just meant we’d paid our dues. Very weird. They even had soft closing toilet lids, what had my life come to?

Not to dwell on this too long, there were hugs and kisses to be shared and more important games to focus on – Carcassonne! I think we let Ben win the first game, giving him false hope he was improving. The game was now on his Christmas wish list and KC had mentioned he’d been strategising since we’d parted ways, he needed something to hold on to before we saw him again. 😉

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The following day, snags, wine, burgers, buns and BBQ sauce had been packed into bags ready for our day out on the Lake. We met our boat at the waters edge, received our ‘what to do and what not to do’ talk and headed out in our metal, cube shaped boat to explore. Within the first hour, I did have a fleeting thought that the day might drag a little, but it actually flew by and we had a lot of fun. We swam, read books and must have caught about 30 catfish. No, they weren’t big and therefore didn’t count as our last item on the Kimberly list. We caught the start of sunset from the boat before coming into dock. The fishing had wiped out the boys and kids as all slumped into bed at the same time while KC and I chin wagged well into the evening. A great day.

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After such frenzied activity the day before, it was time for a lazier day, Monopoly Deal, Uno, cards and Carcassonne all featured, intertwined with dips in the infinity pool to cool the brains and a fabulous roast dinner to finish.

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We’d been getting a burning smell at the back of our car for a little while. Thinking it was the dust from the road gathering around the freezer, Alex decided to take a closer look and pull out the freezer to get to the battery. The battery had gone into thermal runaway, i.e. for the layman like me… it had cooked itself! Not what we were expecting and another job on the growing list of things to fix. Hurumph ☹

After waving goodbye to the Perry’s the following day, we decided to hang around another night, do a bit for school work and cool in the pool. The night temperatures weren’t really dropping below 30 degrees, making it too hot to settle, and temperaments were easily triggered, cooling the core as much as possible was mandatory.

We’d booked Minty and Tinfish in for a service back in Kununurra, so returned west. Needing a break from caravan parks, we headed to Button’s Crossing. A lovely riverside camp, cool, clear, water running past as the Ord River continued its path all the way to Lake Argyle. Tempting as it was, it’s renowned for its Salties, and with not even a breath of wind, we resorted to filling a bucket and chucking it over each other in a bid to wash away the 40 deg humid heat. We did attempt school work, but that went up in flames rather quickly so instead took a run into town to search out the library and aircon. Of course it was Sunday, so everything was closed, apart from Woolies, so a Woolies tour it was. Anything to stay out of the heat and Lexi found the perfect spot!

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The following couple of days we maintained this routine (the library that is, not the woollies tour) and the local swimming pool became the sweetener after finishing the books. As an alternative, we took a drive to Wyndham, the highlight being the 2 hours cocooned in the air-conditioned car for the duration of the journey! Our daily drive into Kununurra took us over the Ivanhoe Crossing, a concrete causeway originally part of the main road through to Wyndham and now only passable in the dry season. It’s a peachy place to have some fun crossing the water. The locals didn’t seem bothered about the crocs in the slightest, as they stood in the water fishing for their dinner. One ingenious kid was very creative in her water travel, hanging on to the tow bar of a 4WD as she was dragged behind.

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Needing to get the rig into town early for their services, we relocated ourselves to a van park with a swimming pool. While Alex took the vehicles to the garages, I decided to try a new schooling tactic. Trying to keep the kids focused is all about motivation, the higher the motivation, the quicker and more focused they are with their school work. Well, that’s my theory anyway. School work by the pool couldn’t be more simple right? Complete this page, go for a swim. Repeat process until all work completed. Well, I’m ever the optimist, but alas, my minds creation didn’t quite go to plan. Pages got wet, only a little school work was completed and a water fight ensued 😊 You can but try.

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Somehow, we managed to stay another 4 nights in Kununurra, enjoying mango smoothies, the library’s air conditioning, the van park pool and somewhere in all that, a bit of school work. Feeling we needed to explore a little further than a 2km radius, we visited the local equivalent of the ‘Bungle Bungles’, a drive up Kelly’s knob (my maiden name) mainly so I could get the picture and throw some cheeky comments at the family on WhatsApp, venture to Butterfly Cave (there were lots of them) and have a dip in Spring Creek. There was even a real-life waterfall at Spring Creek, which was novel after the dryness of the Gibb.

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Whenever we’d had a bit of reception, Alex’s been listening to the Rugby World Cup and as we were driving back to camp one night, the car did a sudden left turn into the pub carpark, England Vs Argentina was on the big screen. It was a good game and obviously we were happy with the result! Back at camp, Reo and Lexi were spurred on and wanted to play. Alex engaged in the action, explained the rules, not that Reo chose to play by any of them, yet the rough and tumble was fun. Reo did his version of the Haka every opportunity he got and I quietly admonished him when he talked about the ‘black players’, explaining they were Maori’s, until Alex corrected me saying he just meant their outfit! LOL

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It had been nice having a base in Kununurra, but Purnululu a.k.a. the Bungle Bungles were calling us. The Bungle Bungle Range is the most outstanding example of kone karst in sandstone anywhere in the world, featuring spectacular gorges, sandstone domes and deep chasms. Purnululu is a rocky outcrop of the Kimberly that also embraces the vast open sandplains of the Ord River Valley. Beyond here just one line of hills remain to the south before the desert country, which is where we were heading next. Purnululu sits on the divide between these two very different worlds and is home to many native species. I did not think we were destined to find any big fish here and this was our last resting place of the great region before heading inland. Looks like we’d just have to return to find those big Barra another time. You always need to leave a reason to return.

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We’d already been experiencing high temperatures and I knew as the land warmed, the heat radiating from the rocks would increase its ferociousness. “Walks would be dawn starts to try and combat the heat”, I announced, which as you can imagine, was met with cries of delight and joy from my 3 regular early risers. However, I’d devised a cunning plan. We would soon be crossing the border into NT (Northern Territory) and they are 1.5 hours ahead of WA (Western Australia) time, so I changed all the clocks by an hour, so that we started working to an earlier rhythm. Alex’s mobile and the car were out of bounds, that did confuse things a little, but I was not to be discouraged! This was mainly for Alex’s benefit, as a 5am start sits a little better with him than a 4am start. 😉 The first morning, Reo threw the alarm clock down the bed in protest! The temp had dropped to a lovely 23deg, now deemed cold and since the last 4am start we’d had was Monkey Mia, when they got to see dolphins, this walk didn’t quite hold the same enticement. Still not to be deterred, I scooped Reo up, slung him into the car, PJs and all and off we set…. The following morning the temperature was still a sticky 31 deg at 4am, or should I say 5am, and since the kids had obviously had such a great day the day before, this time they scampered off eager to catch the sunrise and see what delights the day held.

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I love the Bungle Bungles, the name itself is so funky, how could it not endear you to the place. As we’ve been posting our exploits on Insta and Polarsteps, a good friend asked if we only do walks where there are water holes, and we’ve had our fair share let’s be honest. When it’s 40deg outside, a bit of motivation keeps us all going, especially the kids and a water hole at the end is a great one. Here, there are no waterholes. The kids were aghast. We went all the same, as this is where the bungle bungles come into their own.

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The morning we arrived we started with Echidna Chasm, stepping over boulders the size of a tennis ball to clambering over ones bigger than Reo. In the cool shelter of the tall chasm, with towering walls of conglomerate rock on either side, you are rewarded with the amazing sensation of squeezing along the knife sliced slit which beckons you deeper into the gorge, like Alice in Wonderland down the ever-decreasing corridor. You need to crane your neck to stare up at the multicoloured rock face rising vertically on either side of you, no more than an arm’s width apart and closing as you move further back into the throat of the chasm. We were greeted with the midday light reflecting off the walls, creating an orange glow as if they were on fire. It was mesmerising sitting in the silence, well, those small pockets of it as the kids strayed a little further afield. The thought that this huge chasm has been carved out, bit by bit, by the seasonal flow of water is mind boggling. We’d brought lunch and books to read (school work) as we’d intended to hang around in the cool shade for as long as possible.

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Mini Palms Gorge is one of those walks where it’s about the journey rather than the destination – again, there’s no waterfall or good luck fairy waiting at the end. It was pleasant watching the sun rise and the rocks change colour as we drove from camp to the walk. It was well worth it. You start your walk amongst the needle-sharp spinifex grasses which spike you each time you brush against them, before you start to scramble your way through a narrow gorge and follow the path to the viewing platform deep inside the rocks, allowing you to peer down into the huge auditorium and awe the grandeur of 200m high sandstone walls stretching to the sky. Perched up on the side of the rock faces are the palms, safely out of the way of the waters that must flood these gorges and cascade through the twists and turns during the wet. We sat and chilled out in the shade created by the sheer walls entirely uninterrupted whilst we nibbled on our snacks and played Uno. The evening took us down the road to enjoy the sweeping vistas across the horizon, as the sunset blazed its brilliant reds and yellows against a backdrop of purple hues from the evening sky, lighting up the formations like a stage set.

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The following day was the final attraction, Cathedral Gorge. This part of the park is set amongst the more ubiquitous rock formations that the Bungle Bungle’s are renowned for. Lumpy beehive shaped hills coloured in layers to give them that defining striped appearance. These rocks are made from sandstone and conglomerates and their stripes reflect the amount of water they accept, the rock within the dark stripes is more permeable, allowing algae to flourish, while the less-permeable lighter rocks are created by iron and manganese stains. Basically, they look incredible!

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The track around these formations is a photogenic opportunity not to be missed, set contrasting against the bright blue skies. We strolled amongst the sandstone domes, dotted across the sand plain like ancient monuments. The trail then takes you into another gorge which again bares testimony to the power of water erosion when you emerge at the dead end in a colossal expanse scoured out of the rock as if they’d made an ancient wall of death for a motorbike to race around. Standing by the plunge pool (no salties here) you can look up to see where the water cascades down when in full flood. It must whip the sand and rocks into an immense frenzied whirlpool gouging out more of the circular pit before continuing down through the gorge. This world heritage listed National Park is a bucket list item not to be missed. The long, windy, corrugated track that gave Reo motion sickness on the way in, was just as long, windy, corrugated on the return journey, yet he managed better going out.

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We drove into Halls Creek and instantly noticed how this community outshone many we’d passed through previously. Without wanting to delve into the complexities of the challenges facing Aboriginal people, it’s a widely held view that a lot of the funding and support that has gone into these communities, whilst well intentioned, has been misguided. One novel thought is that to help aboriginal people, you need to gain an understanding of them, yet there is certainly no easy or quick solution. Coming into Halls Creek showed a community that on the surface, was proud of its heritage, dotted all over were car bonnets, painted brightly with the ubiquitous dots synonymous with Aboriginal art. It gave a proud feeling of their community and was really nice to see.

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There was a free community swimming pool, (blummin’ frrrreeeezing!) which we had fun in before heading down the track to Sawpit Gorge for the night, a big rock to hide behind from the morning sun. The following day we managed a dip next door in Palm Springs, crazy to find an oasis like this in the middle of an otherwise dry, desolate outback and then made a quick detour to China Wall, a natural vein of sub-vertical white quartz rising to 6 meters. It’s quite incredible to see, towering above the surrounding landscape. It’s like Jenga gone wrong, with blocks stacked on top of one another in a straight line, which wobbled when Reo started to climb them! He decided that was far enough as he didn’t want to find himself under China Wall.

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The time had come to head inland and try and escape the humid 40-degree heat. We’d decided to head down the Tanami road, a ‘short-cut’ of just 1000km more dirt before hitting Alice Springs. Our first stop was Wolfe Creek. Given we were camping, I hadn’t watched the movie, nor have any intention of watching it, but I did google it after staying there and when I realised that the movie is based on murders from NSW and then placed in Wolfe Creek, I didn’t feel so creeped out! Wolfe Creek is pretty cool and the drone gave a magnificent birds eye view of this immense meteorite crater which formed about 300,000 years ago when an iron meteorite weighting about thousands of tonnes crashed to earth. Measuring 850m across and now around 20m deep, however they believe it was originally 120m deep after the impact. I got the drone up at dusk, sunrise and mid-morning, the pictures quite different with the sun at varying angles.

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The Tanami road was better than some Sydney roads I’ve driven on, it was a smooth ride as we passed into the Northern Territory, our 7th State/Territory of the trip. The start of #CUintheNT began, as we stopped for our mandatory photo shoot next to the welcome sign. A quick change of 30 minutes on the clocks and we were synced with NT time, simple, and no jetlag ensued! We cruised through the Tanami Desert for a couple of hours, disappointed there were no large sand dunes as the word ‘desert’ conjures, just red dirt, spiky spinifex and low-level trees for as far as the eye can see.

We pulled off to a roadside camp and got our first flat of the trip. Alex livid it had gone, for me, it was the first of the trip and we’d been lucky to get this far given the roads we’d travelled on…oh and the fact that Alex had our Master Helper Mr Reo at hand to assist with the change in tyre, I didn’t need to lift a finger. The following morning we were visited by some dingos, including a rare black one. Intrigued by us as we were of them, they came close. I expected Reo, our dog loving enthusiast, to be on the front line wanting more action, alas, he was firmly locked in the car admiring through tinted glass! It took us 3 days to get to Alice Springs from Halls Creek, the Tanami Road is really a lot of nothing. We found camp at the back of a pub which gave us access to amenities and more importantly their pool. It was off for a well needed swim.

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