#because I couldn’t unscrew the top lid because it was SO packed full the pressure made it too tight

[platypusisnotonfire]

I just had an aggravated battle with the vacuum at work and my clothes a a different color now than they were when I put them on

[lindoig]

Days 78 to 85 (post Gibb River Road)

TICK!!!  Been there and done that. I will fill in the past several days events, but I need to interject here to record that the famous/infamous Gibb River Road is behind us.

The north-west of Western Australia was always regarded as very remote when I was growing up in Perth – seemingly as remote as Melbourne or the Moon and the thought of visiting these places engendered the romance of impossibility. And here we are in Derby having driven the full length of the Gibb from Kununurra.  I have always imagined some of Australia’s iconic road trip challenges to include the Gibb, along with adventures along the Birdsville Track, the Oodnadatta Track, the Strzelecki, the road to the Tip, the Nullarbor (before it was sealed and became Nullarbooooring), the Tanami, the Canning Stock Route, the Gunbarrel Highway and maybe a few more – but we have now achieved at least five of these adventures in our dotage and I still get a huge thrill ticking off another of these great experiences – totally unforgettable achievements – exploits to be savoured and recalled time and again.

Back to last Thursday……

We drove from Kununurra to Wyndham – another of the remote romances of my youth.  We called in at The Grotto on the way up.  It was dry, but it is obviously a huge waterfall dropping into a very deep narrow gorge in the Wet.  We stayed at the top, but there is a zigzag set of incredibly steep steps cut into the side of a very dramatic cliff (with no handrail) that are enough to dissuade any sane person from going down for a swim – crocodiles or not!  There must be a lot of non-sane people around!

Wyndham was a bit of a surprise.  It was small, but quite a nice little town surrounded by huge areas of water and tidal flats.  We drove up to the Five Rivers Lookout high above the town and you can see all 5 of the rivers that converge in the area.  The tides can be very high there and the volume of water that flows into the estuary area during the Wet must be mind-boggling.  Yet, it is an all-year port with the wharf and loading facilities built high and strong enough to allow operations to continue regardless of the water level.  We went to the Rusty Shed for a toastie and milk-shake – served in a jam-jar.  It was an experience, but not much more.  We drove back the way we had come, very glad that we had taken the trip out to such an interesting and historic township.

Friday, we commenced our Odyssey on the Gibb.  First, we had to get some repairs done on the van – a couple of minor leaks fixed to our water supply and some undercarriage adjustments because one of our tyres had scrubbed out badly.  One of the U-bolts was a bit loose that may have allowed the wheel to slide back a fraction and damage the tyre, but they said it is almost impossible to do an alignment on our sort of suspension – and it would be cheaper to replace an occasional tyre than to rebuild the undercarriage anyway.

Rigged and ready, we hit the road at noon and rolled along the first 70-odd kilometres on blacktop. Then the fun started.  We drove another 102km on moderately rough road that day before pulling into a disused gravel pit to camp a little after 4pm. The road was a little better than I expected, but speeds varied from under 5kph to close to 70, depending on conditions.  At times, I actually had to stop the car completely – not easy when no wheels are on the road.  On some of the bends, the corrugations were so bad that the car and van were crabbing sideways towards the scrub, but I soon learned to pick my line through the bends and slow down before reaching them.  Cars coming towards us were also a problem. All of them drag a curtain of dust right across the track that reduces visibility to half a metre (from eye to windscreen) for 50 metres or so until it clears – and sometimes they came in pairs or mini-convoys so, with no vision at all, we had to hug the left-hand side of the road in case someone was trying to pass when we were level with the first rig in the line. Some of the approaching vehicles were a little more pernicious.  Some drivers think that travelling at 120 or 130 (or more) avoids the corrugations. They simply bounce from crest to crest – but are also all over the road, swerving erratically to maintain momentum and a modicum of direction.  These vehicles drag the usual curtain of dust, but it is accompanied by a wall of rock wider than the road and travelling at maybe 200kph – not good for oncoming vehicles, but who cares if they get where they want an hour or so earlier than more considerate drivers.  I always slow down, stop sometimes, always hug the left, sometimes get right off the road, to avoid them, but we are still hit by flying rubble from time to time.

There were quite a few creek crossings, but nothing to worry about.  Approach and departure angles were often quite steep (with or without water at the bottom) but the water was never more than about 300mm deep.  We had been told by the guy who replaced the tyres on the car NOT to reduce the pressure on the Gibb, but we found the ride much too hard and a bit dangerous with so little rubber on the road, so we let some air out and driving (and safety) was MUCH improved after that.  Letting the pressure down did, however, identify a problem. One tyre was incredibly hot – and over the next few days, we found it was losing about 10-12 PSI each day with a slow leak.  (I had that repaired in Derby after we arrived – it took the repairman ages to find it.  It was a sliver of wood that had entered at an angle through the tread and just pierced the tyre enough to allow air to escape – but just a tiny amount.)

Our camp was near Rollies Jump-Up and we had many square miles of the Gibb entirely to ourselves for about 12 hours or so.  I found some interesting new birds and as night descended we lit a fire and had an extended Happy Hour (at least 150 minutes in that Hour) watching ‘not another bloody sunset’ and then a blaze of stars (no moon until around midnight). We shared a bottle of bubbles and toasted the Gibb River Road a few times before retreating to the caravan for dinner and a DVD.  We decided we couldn’t allow the isolation to impinge on our routine – and we could have run the generator if we had wanted to anyway.  It is incredibly liberating to be ‘out there’, miles from the nearest people, able to do anything you want, but still with all the comforts of home – except internet access.

We ticked off another 250 kilometres on Saturday and camped in another wonderful gravel pit near Adcock Gorge that night.  Unfortunately, a tub of yoghurt split and even in retrospect, it seems hard to imagine how so much of the inside of the fridge and every item in it could be coated with sticky goo, all of which emanated from such a small tub.  Heather spent ages washing EVERYTHING inside the fridge as well as the inside of the fridge itself.  As these little trials happen, we learn new ways to secure things to avoid repeating the same mistakes.  We have thick tape across the fridge and freezer, some of the drawers, holding the microwave in place and the bathroom door closed.  We use tie-downs to lock the cupboard doors together so none can open and spill their contents around the van, the bed becomes the table on which other breakables, including the TV and our PCs, are stored.  We pack insulation between numerous things in drawers and cupboards, we use stubby holders to stop bottles rattling against each other – and we decant the contents of many bottles into plastic containers wherever possible.  Most things are now well secured or protected, but we still lose occasional things – lids unscrew from most of the jars in the fridge, trim falls off the cupboards, the freezer door almost came off (the bolt in the hinge simply unscrewed and fell out) and numerous other concerns of greater or lesser importance – but we simply glue them back in place a bit better than they were before and hope we don’t need to do it again too soon.

Of course, things also fall off the car.  We almost lost the extended mirrors a few times on the Gibb – one of the bolts worked all the way out and fell off at one point, but I walked back a couple of hundred metres and actually found it – miracle of miracles!  We also heard an awful noise in a wheel at one stage and I was under the car looking for the cause when another car pulled up and the driver suggested we drive a metre or so in reverse.  We did so and the problem disappeared. The other guy had had similar problems and it was a small stone caught in the brakes – reversing threw it out again and off we headed, merrily on our way again.  On the other hand, at one river crossing, we pulled off to have a drink and two other rigs pulled up near us, unaware that they had any problems. I pointed out the broken electric brake wiring hanging on the road on one trailer and the shreds of a 12-pin electrical plug dragging under the other one.  On that occasion, we felt more fortunate than the other guys.

We reached the junction of the Gibb and Kalumburu roads and stopped for lunch in a rest area.  We got chatting with some other people who persuaded us that going to Kalumbaru might be a worthwhile side-trip (we had previously decided against it) so we gave it a go.  Unfortunately, after a few clicks, we decided that it was just too rough and with dire warnings about it getting even worse from rigs returning from the north, we turned back and resumed our journey west.  

The roads can be quite a challenge.  Corrugations can be up to about 10cm deep and at slow speeds, the front wheels can be going uphill while the back wheels are trying to run downhill in the opposite direction – and who knows what the tandems on the van might be doing? It is sometimes very hard to pick up a bit of speed in conditions like that.  But sometimes it was easy and I got up to almost 90kph at one point – although 80 was much more comfortable.  At those speeds, it is a matter of focussing on the road to find the best track of the 8 or 10 available across the road – and weaving back and forth to avoid the sharpest of the stones on your chosen track.  It was certainly a lot of fun and despite the intensity of my focus, I still saw some amazing country, particularly the King Leopold Ranges – stark ridges, great slabs of red and orange rocks, cascades of black and grey boulders, with typical savannah country between the ranges – open grassland with scattered white-trunked trees and no middle storey. I tried to describe this sort of country when we were up in the north-east of the NT, but it is country that I really like.  Some of the spear-grass is up to 5 metres tall, but a lot of the savannah country is simply metre tall grass as far as you can see – with the aforementioned uniformly scattered trees.  Lovely!

The road itself is like a rainbow, frequently changing from almost black through a variety of greys to white, a dozen shades of rich reds, oranges and yellows, even some pale pink – and occasional short (mainly very short!) stretches of blue-metal hardtop in some of the steepest and more dangerous areas.  It sometimes feels as if you are inside a kaleidoscope with all the changing colours on the road and the adjacent vegetation.

We drove more than a hundred kilometres with virtually no termite mounds, but they reappeared with a vengeance as we approached Derby, mainly thousands of the small conical ones, but with a good scattering of the great lumpy mounds – but no magnetic ones.

We endured another glorious sunset and another brilliant dark sky littered with crystal ice, but we refrained from lighting a fire in favour of the intensity of the night that magnified the beauty around us.  I give up trying to describe the wondrous impact of the silence, the remoteness, the awesome beauty, the freedom, the space, the colours and sounds, even the odours of the bush…… Even the cattle around the van during the night add a little to the redolence and resonance we woke to in the mornings.

Our third day on the Gibb was Sunday with no prospect of going to church even had we wanted to. We stopped at the Imintji Aboriginal Roadhouse for fuel and a road condition report.  We had thought we could go into one of the gorges, but everyone said the roads were so dreadful that we shied off them.  And Imintji exacerbated our concerns.  The road in to Silent Grove and Bell Gorge was supposedly in the worst possible condition and people were leaving their vans at the Roadhouse and even then having trouble getting in and out of the Gorge. We stopped at the turnoff to the Gorge and spoke to some people who were just coming out – and they said it was absolutely fine – plenty of caravans going in and out every day with only 3 short river crossings and no problems at all. Given this encouragement, we took the plunge and the road was certainly no worse, most of it better, than the Gibb River Road we had been on for almost the past 500 clicks.  The river crossings were fine – two 300mm deep on a firm rocky bottom and one 400mm deep, totally surrounded by boggy mud.  We just dropped the car into low ratio and ploughed through quite comfortably with no damage or leaks to either car or van.  Easy-peasy!

We went all the way in to Bell Gorge at the end of the road and did the 3km walk to and from the falls. It was dramatic chasm – quite stunning. Heaps of people swimming in the huge pools both above and below the falls – we just wished we had worn our bathers. Bell Creek is obviously a lot more than a creek in the Wet – it was a lot more than a creek when we were there! The hard part was climbing the track back to the car – pity we couldn’t have done the uphill bit first and maybe had a cooling swim before strolling back for lunch in the shade, but water doesn’t run uphill, even in Western Australia.

We had lunch back at the carpark and stopped in at Silent Grove for a cuppa before returning to the Gibb for a couple more hours to another off-road campsite.  It was interesting that the road after the Silent Grove turnoff was notably worse than the road in, and at least as bad as anything further east, so we concluded that the advice we received at Imintji was total bollocks.  We drove to the bitumen that was supposed to start just over 100km from Derby and about 3 or 4 kilometres along, we found a place we could get about 150 metres off the road to a small clearing near a fence so we set up there for the night. Over the fence was a waterhole that was frequented by a lot of birds.  I spent some time photographing a flock of red-tailed cockatoos that were in the trees squawking and squabbling, flying and settling, making a great display with their red and yellow tails flashing in the early evening light.  Then it was time to drink and one by one, they flew down to the water and drank, over 50 of them, but always leaving a few sentries in the trees in case of any reason to alarm them. Then almost on dark, they all flew off to parts unknown where they presumably again squabbled about who was going to roost of which branch of the tree. Along with the cockatoos, a variety of smaller avian visitors came in to drink – or sometimes just cause a bit of a ruckus.  It was another blazing sunset and we sat in the dark, enjoying a red or three and watching the stars.  Damn, life can be good when you really work at it.

Next morning, we were woken by a pied butcherbird – one of the most eerily melodic bird-calls I know – along with a raft of other birds and a gecko or two. Heather made crepes suzette for brekky (we really have eaten well this trip!) and then we hauled our little home down the bitumen (and a few stretches of pretty ordinary gravel) to Derby.  Just another place I never imagined I would see.

We arrived in time for lunch and after getting settled in, we cruised the town for an hour or two, exploring the port area and rolling back to camp just in time to start a very early Happy Hour.  (There seems to be a bit of a recurring theme here.  Enjoying our travels all day, Happy Hours, gourmet food and the occasional mild embrocation, early nights with entertainment of our choice – must get the dominos out again: we had so much fun playing them in Tassie – and more indulgence than we have enjoyed for many years.  And long may it be so.)

Tuesday was largely a lay-day, catching up on email and paying bills and all the other business things that get in the way of total indulgence.  A bit of blogging, some birding around the park, cooking, eating and all the other things that represent a lazy day around camp.  I had to get the tyre with the slow leak repaired and the guy who did that managed to take 2 hours over it.  He made a derogatory comment about our Victorian number-plates and I told him I was born a Waussie – and we became friends for life. He came from Boyanup, but knew Wagin and Perth pretty well so we chatted for ages while he avoided working on our tyre. His offsider worked pretty consistently, but the boss just wanted to yarn with me and it was quite fun.

Wednesday was also spent mainly in and around the van.  Again, there were lots of things we needed to do, including writing up more of our recent travels. We did a couple of loads of washing and went out during the afternoon to see the wharf area when the tide was at its nadir.  It was quite fascinating seeing thousands of fiddler crabs and really large mudskippers cavorting on the mud with a small flock of sacred kingfishers enjoying the opportunity too.  There were great schools of pop-eyed mullet swimming around, scads of them, all crowded together with just their eyes out of the water – very strange looking fish.  We visited the Visitors’ Centre (just made it before they closed the doors) and collected some information about the highlights of the Derby district and did some more shopping: a few odds and ends for the van and a pre-emptive strike at the supermarket and associated BWS.

And to compare the tides, we went down to the wharf this morning when the tide was at its zenith and there were no crabs, no mudskippers, no kingfishers, no reef egrets – and no mud.  They have tides up to 11 metres here and today’s was about 8.5 according to one of the fishermen there.  The sea was right up to the shore and into the trees – at least 150 metres further in than when we saw it yesterday.  The mudbanks out to sea were all submerged today and it was a very different scene from late yesterday.  I dropped Heather back at the van so she could start a mammoth cleaning job while I went to the sewerage farm to look at birds.  (In fairness, she said she was going to write more of her blog, but cleaned instead.)  On return from my expedition, I started cleaning the car – an equally mammoth job that knocked me out about a third of the way through.  (I am returning to the fray as soon as I post this!)

An interesting sidelight to my birding today was that I added one species to our trip list that I have expected to see almost every one of the nearly 13000 km we have travelled.  The grey teal is one of our most common duck species that we see everywhere – except anywhere along that particular 13000 km. They are relatively less common around here, but I saw 3 in the pond this morning – our first sighting since Tassie!

If anyone is interested, that brought our trip tally to 245 (336 for the calendar year so far) including 51 newies for us (74 for the year).  Our total species since we started recording in about 2007 is 664 seen in Australia (or 907 including our NZ and Russian trips.)  The 664 is significant because we were congratulated on reaching the 500 milestone when on Cocos Keeling Island two and a half years ago.

I will try to post some pics later today, but now, back to cleaning the car……