This morning, Matt’s first words to me were ‘Happy Birthday!’ And it has been. Our friends gave me a t-shirt, hand cream, and a book on the Gibb River Road, which we will embark on in a day or so. We headed out of Kununurra and went to the Ivanhoe Crossing, over the Ord River. We were able to capture the 3 buses crossing the river together, and soon a few other spectators joined us in taking snapshots.
From there we headed out and every turn there were views to enjoy, mountains with rugged and rocky tops, gorges and canyons. This area is not short of a view. We headed off the main road and started a dirt track down to the cattle station ‘ The Digger’s Rest’. We crossed a salty dry lake bed, and the road was pretty rough and very corrugated, a taste of what we expect to find the Gibb River Road to be like. Along the way, we stopped at the ‘Prison Boab’, a very large boab tree with a hollow, that was used as a place to imprison Indigenous people that had been captured and on the way to being taken to Wyndham. Not a nice history. The tree is over a few hundred years old. Today was not the day for our mate David’s alternator belt tensioner, and we had a few stops. One stop involved David and Ian heading to nearby Wyndham to find a new bearing for the idler pulley. Luckily, a guy there had the part and it was back and running again.
A couple of k’s down the road we had to stop again to tighten his fanbelt and then a couple more to replace the fanbelt that then snapped… all good now though.
At the end of the dirt road was the cattle station, which became famous after being a filming location for the movie ‘Australia’ with Baz Luhrmann and Hugh Jackman signing the pool room wall, and now most guests usually sign the wall at this property.
I became one of the dogs best friends cause my hands were tasty. We were able to find a nice camp spot by the King River and set up for a chilled afternoon. David went fishing, and the rest of us went croc spotting, and found one that would appear then silently disappear beneath the water, then reappear elsewhere. We set up a camp fire and then relaxed. I enjoyed some phone calls and messages for my birthday. David caught a small catfish, endemic to the area, but it was too small, and got returned. We got the fire going while we enjoyed watching the sunset and the colours of the rocks across the water light up, the water stilled and we got reflections of the rocks in the water. The coals of the fire were perfect for the making of damper and the others all enjoyed some savoury damper for pre-dinners. Cows and bulls were baying across the water and their cries were echoing across the valley we were in.
After dinner, we filmed the croc swimming about. The stars started to come out and the sky darkened. I was able to reposition our camp chairs into a recline position and could comfortably look up at the night sky and the millions of stars. If you shined a torch on the water, you could spy pairs of eyes sparkle in the water, there were more crocs than we had realised in the water. I was able to spot 3 shooting stars over the evening. I have been enjoying the glow of the campfire reflected back at Bridget’s front, crickets chirping, and here I am writing today’s blog, a rustle of a cow coming down to drink, or a splash of water and presumably noises from a croc on the hunt. Just had a dingo howling a couple of hundred metres away, What a way to end my birthday, staring at millions of stars.
