10-July
Gibb River Road
The Kimberley is a large area in Western Australia the size of the UK. To get to the most beautiful and very remote spots, like gorges and waterfalls, you have to take the Gibb River Road. This is, a mostly dirt track, of 644 KM from Derby to Kannunarra. To use this road you need a rugged 4 wheel drive vehicle. Less then a third of the Gibb River Road is sealed, the rest is dirt track. If you are lucky, and we have seen one already, they have just graded the road. Basically this is a sort of snowplow for sand that smoothest out the surface. But most of it is corrugated and driving these roads is hard on the vehicles and caravans they towing along. There are no hotels or motels in the Kimberley so you have to be self sufficient. Another reason we could not have done this with our caravan as that would have fallen apart after 50 KM.
Start of the Tour
We had to get ready for our pick up at 6 am to start our Kimberley tour. After being welcomed by Kaz and Jimmy, our tour guides for the next 12 days we loaded all our luggage and drinks in the truck. We picked up a few more guests before setting of on a long drive of 650 KM to get to our first stay of the trip.
On the way we made a stop to admire the Prisons Boab tree, which has a dark history in Australia.
Talking about Boab trees, there are so many here, it is just amazing. They come in all kind of shape and forms, some with leaves, some without, some with a slim trunk, some with a very rounded one, some with there traditional nuts and some without anything. The reason for this is quite simple, the fatter trees are older and have stored more water in their trunk than the slimmer ones, the trees with more leave still have access to more water from the ground while the ones who have no leaves have not. This has all to do with the dry season we are in at the moment.
The story we were told by our pilot when we did the Horizontal Falls was that millions of years ago when Australia was still connected to Africa, the Boab trees were left behind when the continents drifted apart. As a result there are Boab trees here, in Africa and Madagascar (called Baobabs). There is also the story that they were brought here by the first people some 72,000 years ago. Whatever the truth is they are here everywhere and they are very impressive.
We arrived at our planned camp site for tonight and unloaded the truck, tents and swags, before we drove another 35 KM to see the Tunnel Creek, a 750 meter long natural tunnel that has formed over millennia. Getting into the tunnel was not an easy job but once inside it was just amazing. The rock formations and the colours are just hard to describe.
We spent a few hours going through the tunnel before heading back to camp to set up our tents. Tonight is the only time we will have to set up our tents (and pack them up in the morning). But we will be sleeping in our swags for the 12 nights.
Once the tents were up we went for a walk to the Windjana Gorge, only a 15 minutes walk from the camp site. The colours of the rock, when hit by the low sun are just stunning, so very red. We did not see any crocodiles, although Jimmy was convinced there were plenty around.
Once back at camp Kaz had prepared some nibbles and was getting things ready for dinner. It was a great way to close of our first day, food was delicious and we are all getting along very well.
Here are some pictures of the day.
Geweldig!!!!!!