Red Rocks and Crocs: Part 2 (The Gibb River Road!)

The centerpiece of our trip was the Gibb River Road (GRR). It is a 660km dirt (aka "unsealed") road, and was the main reason we had a 4WD vehicle. The main sights along the way are a series of "pictures-can't-do-us-justice" gorges.

Everything we read about the Gibb made it sound a bit daunting, since we'd never driven on dirt roads for this long before, and never forded crocodile-infested rivers. But we made it... far more easily than we'd expected.

Here's what we saw at the beginning of the road (although the first 25kms or so were recently paved...):

El Questro

Our first stop was within El Questro (a major tourist company that owns a massive piece of land, which happens to have some gorgeous sights).

Our first gorge was at Emma Gorge. This involved a walk along a very rocky path beside a burbling creek, surrounded by some surprisingly lush vegetation.

This was a pretty-coloured pool we arrived at just before getting to the main part of the gorge. It was too big to photograph properly, but you can at least get a sense of the pretty colours:

The next stop, also within El Questro, also felt like an oasis. This was Zebedee Springs: a group of thermal springs surrounded by the rare Livitsonia Palms (which you may recognize from the Bungle Bungles).

(Look closely in the springs, to see evidence we were really in this paradise!)

The view looking up:

Pentecost River to Ellenbrae

We continued on the road, when we came upon our first (and biggest) river crossing: the Pentecost River. We'd been warned about crocs there, so we didn't linger. Since this was the dry season, the water was pretty low... and we didn't see any crocs.

Here's a view along the road just after the Pentecost River.

This was our first encounter with non-bird wildlife. Don't worry: this is a picture we took from the car, and we had no other personal encounters with snakes for the rest of the trip:

From recent Wikipedia research, Colin is pretty sure this was a non-venomous water python. He had been hoping that it was something tremendously deadly, but alas.

Our goal for our first night was to get to one of the places along the road where we could camp: a station (i.e. a ranch) called Ellenbrae. Along the driveway into the property were some very nice hand-painted signs that kept our spirits up in the heat:

We made it in time to enjoy our scones in their beautiful gardens:

The station was originally owned and built up (including the gardens and buildings) by a pair of brothers. A plaque said both died a few years apart, one in a plane crash and the other in a motorcycle accident. Their creative handiwork was still evident around the property, including this stone table with tractor-seat chairs:

That night we ate dinner by a fire. The fire was surprisingly easy to get going - pretty much everything lying around was happy to burst into flame (more about that later). This finally felt like the "real" outback.

Ellenbrae to the Mornington Turn-Off

Continuing along the road the next morning, we came across a flock of gulahs headed in the same direction:

Our mid-day goal was Barnett River Gorge. The directions we'd found online said that it was a 3k drive off the main road, and that we should allow 30 min each way for the drive. "Silly directions," we thought, "it doesn't take 30 minutes to drive 3 kilometers."

Turns out it can. The road was filled with spikey rocks just waiting for a tire to puncture. This picture only gives a vague idea...

The gorge itself was very pretty. It wouldn't have been worth a punctured tire... but our tires held up. Here's the gorge.

As you might have realized by now, 'gorge' was used pretty liberally in these parts.

Our destination for that night was a campground by the Mt. Barnett Roadhouse, by Manning Gorge. Our camping spot was next to some clusters of boabs:

The next morning, we walked to Manning Gorge. The trail wasn't long, but required one to pull oneself across by hand. Here's Colin, after our crossing, feeling proud of himself for not having dumped us in the water:

Manning Gorge itself was stunning and, like all the gorges, defied any attempts to capture it by photos. Here's one of the photos it defied (see the waterfall in the distance?):

On the road after Manning Gorge, we drove by some surprisingly large birds co-habitating peacefully with the very large cows:

We're pretty sure these were brolgas, a type of crane.

Mornington Wildlife Sanctuary

Our destination for that night was the Mornington Wildlife Sanctuary, which lies 90k off the Gibb. The Sanctuary is funded by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy. Being a considerate group, they set up a booth at the turn-off where one can radio ahead. This avoids one driving an extra 90k only to find that there are no campsites left. We were lucky - we snagged one of the last two spots. Here's the call-box:

Mornington offered two gorges: Dimond (sic) and Sir John's. When we arrived at the ranger station, we asked the ranger which was better, since we had limited time. His answer was "well, they're different." We thought that was just lack of evaluative courage on his part... until we saw them ourselves.

Here's Dimond Gorge:

This is the river leading into Dimond Gorge:

The hills around Dimond Gorge:

And a "swimming hole" further up the river that was our last stop for the day:

Wow.

The next morning, we headed to Sir John's Gorge. The birds were out in force. Here are two black cockatoos:

And... the gorge itself:

White parrots flying by:

Looking up the gorge, with another flock passing by (there were several flocks - both black and white - that went by not-very-quietly while we were there):

Just to round things off, a short-eared rock wallaby made an appearance:

This is one of the most viciously, ruthlessly cute species of wallabies. There's a good picture on the relevant Wikipedia page. Other than the wildlife, we were the only people at the gorge the whole time we were there.

On our way out of Mornington, we saw this otherworldly boab:

The End of the Road: Imintji to Tunnel Creek

After making it back to the Gibb, we stopped to re-fuel. It's not a place where one can shop around for the lowest price. Diesel was 229.5 cents per liter. For our American readers: that's about $8.70 per gallon.

For lunch that day, we made a quick stop at Lennard Gorge. The sides are too steep to allow a path down, but (leaning a bit dangerously over the fence) one could get a fair sense of it:

On the map, we'd seen an unexplained point of interest called "Queen Victoria's Head." We had no idea what that was, until we saw (look to the right):

That night, we stayed at Windjana Gorge, which cuts through a nearly-vertical limestone formation. This is outside the gorge at sunset:

Inside the gorge (the next morning) felt almost prehistoric:

And, it turns out, Windjana is a great freshwater crocodile-viewing spot. We saw about a dozen. Here's one (and maybe another one in the distance):

They were small-ish, and kind of charming.

Just down the road was a trek called 'Tunnel Creek,' where a creek has cut through another wall of limestone. The walk required flashlights and getting one's feet wet. Halfway through was a place where the top had caved in:

Someone else walking said that she'd seen a croc swimming through. So we hereby claim that we've waded through crocodile-infested waters.

Next time: Middle Lagoon and Broome.

Red Rocks and Crocs: Part 1

For our final Aussie adventure, we decided to explore the "Top End." We flew up to Darwin and drove west to the town of Broome over 2 weeks in a 4WD camper van/truck.

Darwin ("Dah-win")

Darwin is the capital of the Northern Territory. Compared to the southern cities, it felt much more like a tropical outpost mixed with a resort.

We just stayed there one night, and the highlight was going to the Mindil Beach Market:

 We ate some delicious Indonesian food and a tropical smoothie just before the sun starting setting.

On the right here, you can see the stand for Mick's Whips. Mick (or his representative) did demonstrations with his whips, snapping them in rhythm. 

Apparently, we weren't the only ones excited to get to see the sunset over the ocean and eager to document the experience:

Kakadu

Our next target was going to Kakadu National Park - a few hours southeast from Darwin.  The park is huge, though the majority of it is flat and relativity uneventful woodland like this:

Warning signs were regular once one got close to water:

Despite the sign, we didn't see any 'wild' animals there, nor did we find out why "wild" was in quotes.

We did see some incredible rock art of animals, however:

 And gorgeous views. This is looking out over to Arnhemland, a huge area to the east that one cannot travel to without a special permit.

The rock formations in Kakadu are made from sandstone that is almost 2 billion year old.

There were also some unusual trees with pretty flowers:

Notice how the ground looks burnt? We'll talk more about that later...

Katherine

The next destination was Katherine Gorge. Just before the gorge, we stopped in at Edith Falls. It mainly boasted a popular non-saltwater-crocodile infested swimming hole, which was nice and refreshing in the heat:

On the lower right, you can see other people in the water.

We arrived at the campgrounds in Katherine Gorge just before sunset, which gave us a chance to finally see some local wildlife in action.

There were trees full of bats just waking up. We could tell, because they were LOUD!

We also came across an Agile Wallaby and a bird having dinner together peacefully:

After our wildlife walk, we were hit with a magnificent sunset:

That night, we had a relaxed evening in the campgrounds. In case you were wondering what we were travelling around it, here's a typical view from that night:

Each night, we popped the top up, which became our sleeping loft. The stove and table were pulled out the side of the truck. It wasn't overpoweringly space-y inside, but being able to cook and eat outside made things pretty easy.

In the morning we took a beautiful walk to actually get to see Katherine Gorge. It was hard to get a good shot, but this should give you some sense:

 

Road to Western Australia border

From Katherine, our next destination was just over the border into the state of Western Australia. It was a long day's drive, but as we went we could gradually see the landscape change. One of the big changes was the appearance of the iconic Boab trees, along with red-rocked cliffs.

Boab trees are basically water tanks with a few branches tagged on. They're the perfect design for a hot landscape that gets heavy rain half the year and none the rest.

There was a quarantine check going over the state border and we had to declare that we had no fresh fruits and veggies! They let us in with some raisins/sultanas, though. Here were some welcome signs:

Lake Argyle

The night after crossing the state border, we stayed at Lake Argyle. It's a man-made lake, but impressive nonetheless, especially in the late-afternoon sun:

Bungle Bungles! (Purnululu National Park)

Our next destination was the Bungle Bungle range, officially known as Purnululu National Park. It's most famous for it's beehive-shaped domes with orange and black stripes, but we found that there was much more there. The entrance to the park was after about 50km (which took about 1.5 hours) on a rocky dirt road.

This was our first dirt road of the trip (what we needed the 4WD for!):

Our first hike in the park was through Echidna Chasm. This was in the northern part of the mountain range, which was quite different than the southern part where the domes were. 

Here you can see some evidence of the orange and black rocks, but also the rare Livitsona Palms. The trail was mainly walking through a dry creek bed and the palms against the red cliffs. We felt like we were on some other planet or in a strange oasis:

 There was also evidence of wildlife just next to the trail: a bowerbird nest.

The bird wasn't home.

The chasm became progressively narrower and darker. Here's Naomi at the end:

 Once back out where we started, there was a magnificent look-out in the late afternoon sun:

That evening, we watched the effects of the sun setting reflecting on the mountains near our camp ground:

The next morning we went to the other end of the park to finally get to see the Bungles.

Here's the approach. The lumpy things are Bungles:

Here is a Bungle up close, with a termite hill "growing" out of it:

More views of Bungles:

Many of the Bungles were along creek beds, which some of the trails led up. The most spectacular of these was Cathedral Gorge, which ended in a giant natural amphitheater with a pool. No picture can really capture it, but this will give you a sense:

Like a lot of Australia, the place had a strange mix of harshness and vulnerability. The landscape was definitely rough: desert that gets blasted by rain regularly. But the Bungle formations themselves are, we learned, very fragile: the black stripes are only formed on the surface by bacteria, and are easily destroyed.

Coming up next time: a much longer dirt road, more gorges, and (yes) wild crocodiles.