Up the creek without a paddle

 

Wednesday 23 June 2021 – Up the creek without a paddle

It rained overnight to the point where L had to get up and ‘tilt’ the awning so that the water could run off to one side.  He almost did a Jenny and tilted it so that all the water tipped over him though – funny how you just don’t think that clearly about that sort of thing at 3am.  So it was a different type of morning in the Kimberley with a wet and muddy pack up instead of a dry and dusty one!

H&M left first thing with the plan of getting to the Over the Range repair place at opening time and hence be first in the queue.  We followed along behind at a more leisurely pace after saying goodbye to our new friends Greg and Lynn and exchanging phone numbers etc.  They are coming back to WA in December as their son is competing in the Busselton Triathalon so hopefully we can catch up with them again then and find out how the rest of their holiday went.

We caught up with H&M at Over the Range and Neville and his offsider Justin were pretty confident they could weld something together to keep them on the road.  The only problem being that it might be a lengthy process as their first priority is tyre repairs/sales and so they would do H&M’s job when they weren’t dealing with tyres.  H&M decided to unhitch and spend the time visiting Galvan’s Gorge and Adcock Gorge.  Having done Adcock gorge previously when we had been stuck at Over the Range with the Kokoda in 2016 we decided to push on for Windjanna Gorge campground and claim a good spot for the two vans.

So we pushed on with a brief stop at Imitintji.  We arrived just before two busloads of school kids going on an excursion from Mt Barnett school to Derby so that was good timing!  We then played bus relay with the school buses until the Windjana Gorge turn off with just a brief taste of bitumen before we did so.

The unsealed road into Windjanna is pretty good though with only small corrugations and consequently there were a lot of still clean cars and caravans at the campground.  Out set up well and truly showed us up as having come ‘the hard way’!  We set up and saved a place next to us for H&M with tables and chairs as it is likely they won’t arrive til late afternoon. Toasted ham and cheese sandwiches with the last of the bread from Kununurra – it has lasted surprisingly well but toasted is the only way to eat it at this stage – and then donned bathers and wading shoes for our excursion to Tunnel Creek.

We got about 10 minutes down the road before remembering it’s called Tunnel Creek for a reason so a quick backtrack to the van for the head torches and we were on our way.  The trip was a bit longer than we remembered it and Jenny felt that she had well and truly been thrown about in the car over rough roads for long enough by the time we got there.  It was still a cloudy and cool day so the idea of immersing ourselves in the creek in the tunnel  wasn’t as welcome an idea as it might otherwise have been but L assured J that the people coming out seemed only wet to their waists so we entered the tunnel confidently.

The first creek crossings were fairly shallow but then there was a warning sign to say we had to swim (!) so into the icy depths we plunged.  At this point in the tunnel there was nobody else around so it was a bit disconcerting to swim into the icy depths and not really be able to see the opposite bank.  Jenny did lots of loud splashing to remind the local freshwater crocodiles not to come any closer.  Larry was amused that Jenny swam with the Go-Pro above her head like a telescope even though the damn thing is waterproof!!

It was an exciting experience and truly spectacular with a waterfall flowing into the cave at one point and lots of the cave roof dripping and forming new stalactites.    We didn’t see any crocodiles and, as we took our time, it was late afternoon by the time we left the cave and we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves.

Back to the van with all our wet clothes and shoes in plastic bags to be dealt with at a later date.  We had hot showers to warm up and then tried calling H&M to see where they were at.  Good timing as they were literally pulling into the gate so we directed them to their spot and then prepared them a welcome gin and tonic while they dashed down to Windjanna gorge to see it in the setting sun.  It was quite spectacular with the setting sun reflecting off the rock faces.

We cooked them a marinated lamb roast and veg for dinner.  It certainly seems to have worked in terms of taking turns cooking dinner with it being our turn to cook every time they have had a long day with the last thing they want to think about is making dinner.

We sat and chilled after dinner and H cracked open a bottle of Scotch so we were all quite chilled by bed time.