TUESDAY 18 JUNE 2019
We slept really well after our long day of fresh air and
exercise (reeling in all those fish!) so missed seeing the kids off to
school. Took us a while to pack up after
3 days of leaving things all over the van but on the road by 9am and drove in
to Wyndham town to fuel up and to find PJ and Deb in their Wyndham Takeaway
Food (WTF!) van who were doing a roaring trade in proper coffee machine coffees
and toasted sandwiches to locals and tourists alike. They run the van 4 days a week in the town
and then also cater for football days etc and business is pretty good. Too good
in fact so that they are finding it a bit tiring and have put the van on the
market. We said our goodbyes and thank
you’s after ordering bacon and egg toasties to go with Deb’s homemade relish
(yum!!). Also bought a couple of raffle
tickets so we may be back in Wyndham again to collect!!
On down the road to the turn off to the Gibb River Road and
stopped for the obligatory photo of the sign before heading west towards El
Questro. Jenny was driving this bit and
remembered from last time to slow down for all the dips where the water crosses
the road in the wet. Some of them are
quite steep and you can easily bottom out if you are not careful – we nearly
managed to do that going in the opposite direction last time as we had been
lured into a false sense of security by being back on the bitumen again.
At the El Questro turn off we pulled up, let all the tyres
down, switched on the PPDSS and swapped drivers. From here the real Gibb River Road, and the
gravel, begins. Onwards to the Pentecost
River crossing which was depressingly low in terms of water so no excitement
there. Then we headed on and on west
with much of the road being surprisingly good – a lot of grey road base and
graded sections and not really any serious corrugations. We pulled over to check the van after about
an hour, however, and found yet another screw on the floor (they are getting
shaken from somewhere – we don’t always find where from though) and the tap on
the bathroom handbasin had shaken loose.
These are all typical Jayco problems so we knew they were likely to
happen and had the tools to deal with them.
The Tarzan Grip is getting a workout!
We made Ellenbrae about 1.30pm and checked into the
Homestead for their famous freshly baked scones with jam and cream and a sit in
their garden oasis of green grass and shady trees. We then made our way down to Ringers campsite
and found a shady spot for the van next to the creek bed which this year is,
unfortunately, dry. When we were here
with Ben 3 years ago we swam here and that was later in the season. Oh well.
There was another swimming hole about 5km away but we couldn’t be
bothered unhitching the van to drive to it so instead we set the van up, did
the running repairs on the van and then decided to collect some firewood so
that we can have a fire seeing as we are camped right next to a fire ring.
Although it’s too hot to want to sit next to a fire we got
one going so that we could get some good coals and bake potatoes to have with
our lamb chops (marinated in basil, garlic, olive oil and parmesan
cheese). 4.30pm and it was already
getting towards dusk and our fire was doing so well we decided to just cook
everything on it so the plate from the Weber went on the fire for the chops and
Jenny mixed up some damper for the camp oven to put in the coals as well. So we ended up having a very delicious dinner
of marinated lamb chops, roasted potatoes (with garlic butter) and salad,
followed by damper with honey or jam.
We then sat and digested and stared at our fire until startled
by the howling of dingoes somewhere out to our left. A full moon tonight so I guess they were
howling at that but it was quite scary sounding and it prompted me to go and
get a torch so I could make sure they weren’t sneaking up on me! Pretty sure they must have also unnerved the
Ellenbrae cattle as it wasn’t long before there were long drawn out bellows
echoing across the hillside and that continued on and off for the rest of the
night.
Feeling tired and ready for bed I checked the time to find
it was about 6.55pm (!) and I just can’t go to bed that early so we sat around
and read our tablets until about 8pm and then went to bed. With all the windows open to let in the
breeze we’ll probably be up before 6am anyway.
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