Pack up day this morning and it look us a little longer than
normal as we have had Ben to help the last couple of weeks and we had fallen
into a routine with all of us having our own allocated tasks. Today we had to cover Ben's tasks and, whilst
Ben had got them down to a fine art, we had to learn them afresh. For instance, we had a few go's at packing up
his swag!
On the road and headed back towards Kununurra. We had a brief moment of hesitation at the
T-junction at the top of the Lake Argyle Road - should we go left and back to
Kununurra and home or turn right and head towards the Northern Territory and
continue around Australia. If only we'd
won Lotto the other night it would have definitely been right!!! As it was, being Lotto losers, we turned left
and retraced our steps to Kununurra.
Made our way to the Discovery Lakeside Kununurra caravan
park. I had booked a lakeside site
months ago and we were so glad we did as it was a big park and a lot of people
were stuck up the back with no lake view at all whereas the water was about 10
metres from the van where we were and we could drag our chairs to the riverbank
and watch the lake, the birdlife and, later on, the fruit bats.
We set up the van and then realised that the West Coast game
was due to start shortly so we decided to stay at the van for the duration and
do some chores and have lunch. Not the
most relaxing game to watch, the Eagles made tough work of beating Carlton and
actually looked like they might give the game away towards the end. Still, came away with the win and Larry won
the footy tipping round so a good result in the end.
We finally stirred ourselves and hopped back in the car to
look at some of the sights around Kununurra.
Drove out to Ivanhoe Crossing and watched a few cars plough across and a
couple of fishermen not having much luck.
Larry decided he couldn't be bothered driving across just to drive back
again so instead we headed to the nearby Sandalwood factory (a sister to the
one just out of Mount Barker and so not very exciting) and then to the Hoochery
where rum from local sugar cane is distilled.
We tried a few samples of different rums and liqueurs but a bit strong
for us - might have appreciated them more if there'd been mixers to try them
with but that's probably blasphemy to diehard spirit drinkers. Instead we tried the icecream sandwiches -
mine having rum and raisin icecream with two oatmeal biscuits and Larry's
having the coffee/chocolate rum liqueur with chocolate biscuits. Yummo!
It was getting on towards late afternoon (in the Kimberley
that means 4pm) so we next headed to Hidden Valley National Park, otherwise
known as the mini Bungles. There were a
couple of nice walks through the rocks and were impressed by the quality and extensiveness
of the concrete paths and metal ramps.
No possibility of a trip and a sore toe here! It was a lovely place and we managed to get
some good photos of the nearly full moon through gaps in the rock. It felt like we were a million miles from anywhere
so we jumped when Larry's phone rang.
Actually Kununurra town is just on the other side of the rocks - barely
half a kilometre away and Tom was ringing to talk about catching up tomorrow.
By this time it was heading towards sunset so we drove up
the carpark at Kelly's Knob and walked to the first lookout to watch the sun go
down. We very quickly decided that,
although the lookout was pretty crowded with other people, there was no way we
were going to tackle the long hike to the top of the knob - there was even a
ladder involved! We convinced ourselves,
though, that we just weren't doing it as it would be too dangerous coming back
down in the dark and nothing to do with our preference for sitting on our butts
with drinks in hand where we were.
While we were sitting there I was telling Larry about my
memories of what Warren and Barbara had told me about living in Kununurra and
how Barbara had always talked about the fruit bats coming out at sunset. We didn't see any up on the hillside but as
we drove back to the caravan park, they all decided to come out of the trees
and fly around our heads and over the caravan and the lake. They were really loud too - it was like
living in a zoo. Once it was dark,
though, they all disappeared off and we had a quiet night at
"home"with salt and pepper calamari and salad for dinner.
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