Thursday 1 June 2023 – Kununurra to El Questro
We had aimed to leave Kununurra at 8.30am but, as we were ready a little earlier than the others, we made a diversion back into town so that we could buy more cereal as the one box we had bought didn’t look like it would last two weeks on the Gibb.
Caught up with Shaun on the road out of town and we drove out to the Gibb River Road turnoff where we stopped for the obligatory photo next to the sign and Swampy added a sticker to the collection.
Mission accomplished and having received a text that the Adamsons were only just leaving the CP, we moseyed on along the road towards El Questro. We took it easy over the many flood ways, some of which still have some water in them, but were soon at the El Questro turnoff where we stopped to let our tyre pressures down and let past a hire car who wanted to go flat chat and cover us in a layer of dust – no letting tyres down for them – hope they get a puncture and, as another curse we read somewhere recently, their beers go warm.
A couple more river crossings on the road in than we remember and we actually saw the mythical El Questro grader albeit just driving along and not actually grading anything. Having said that, there were patches of decently graded road which was nice. We crossed the main river crossing into the village with ease and checked in. Nice powered sites on grass and away from the tightly packed sites and once we had got the sprinklers turned off we were able to park up. Bit tight to get into from the road as there are trees on either side of the site so luckily there was no one parked behind us and we were able to drive in from there.
The Adamsons turned up not long after and we were able to guide them in using the same technique and then sit down to PB & J sandwiches as we need to eat the Kununurra loaf while it is still fresh.
Quite a few places, such as Moonshine Gorge, Branco’s lookout, Explosion Gorge etc are still closed this season, we presume because of high water levels and washed away roads over the wet season, so we decided to just stay put in the village for the afternoon. We put swimming attire on and headed down to the swimming hole behind the steakhouse where we braved the water and sat there with drinks thinking of all the adjectives to describe the icy cold water when people came over and asked what is was like in.
Once we had gone all pruney it was back to the vans and then up to the showers for a rinse off and to wash my hair. After sitting and chatting for a while we decided we may as well head up to Pigeon Hole lookout to watch the sunset and so left camp about 3.30pm in order to get up there and getting a parking spot for the cars and a parking spot for our butts on one of the benches before the hordes arrived.
It was lovely up there and between the 3 groups of us we managed a pretty good cheese platter to go with our drinks and then happily chatted with each other and other groups until the sun went down. It was then an exciting trip back to the CP in the dark with visibility fairly poor due to dust clouds hovering over the road. J told L to slow down to which he replied “I’m only doing 25!” to which Jen replied “then do 20!!”. Safely back to camp though and we cooked up bbq beef brisket with Turkish bread and coleslaw and then had a lovely evening sitting around the vans and chatting.
Went to bed with the drone of the generators in the background which I thought would keep me awake until they didn’t.
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