It’s a long trip from El Questro to Broome, with little to see and do on the way (if going the bitumen route). There’s The Bungle Bungles, but we’d already seen them earlier, and other gorges and attractions such as those found on the Gibb River Rd are accessed by 4wd or heavily corrugated dirt roads only. We spent the first night at a large free campsite, almost opposite the turnoff to The Bungle Bungles. Halls creek is soon after and from then on it is rather boring driving, being mostly flattish grass plains, with either a smattering of Eucalyptus trees or a bit of scrub. After my comments a couple of posts ago, Nicole has kindly been pointing out various Boab trees that she thinks look good after all… 🙂 One interesting thing I did note is a different style termite mound, presumably from a different species. I’ve nicknamed this the ‘brain termite’ for reasons I hope are obvious!

The brain termite mound.

We took the opportunity to stop in at Geikie Gorge National Park, near Fitzroy Crossing where we spent the second night (on the side of a road). The main purpose and attraction of this NP is a section of the Fitzroy River, with its gorge and wildlife. The mighty Fitzroy River is said to have the second highest output of any river in the world (after the Amazon River), but that obviously wasn’t the case right now – it was barely a trickle!! Not sure if peak output during the wet season is the correct way to compare river systems… Nevertheless we headed out to the National Park to do a guided tour on the Fitzroy River (Sun 7/9/2014). This was run by the national parks, at a reasonable cost for the family (less than hiring a single canoe for the day at Katherine Gorge!).

The Fitzroy River

Our tour guide was Ranger Dan, who is an interesting character with a good laid back Aussie sense of humour. The limestone gorge walls, washed/bleached white by the wet season flood waters, are a main tourist attraction of the park. These are interesting and nice, but not amazingly spectacular. Though the river flow may be reduced to a trickle at the moment, by no means does the river dry up – our boat was on a long deep permanent waterhole. Perhaps the nicest thing about the tour was just being out on the water in a pretty scenic river. It helped being up in the front row seats of the boat, not jammed back with the 37 strong tour group that arrived to ‘touristise’ what would have otherwise been a tour group of 6!

this limestone wall has character

Fairy Martin nests under limstone ledge

Water monitor lizard. Apparently they are expecting these to be wiped out when the cane toad arrives (probably this season).

Two in one – water monitor lizard and freshwater croc!

After the cruise we spent a couple hours fishing in the Fitzroy River for that elusive Barra, from the Bunba sandbar (centre of last photo above). No luck….

Then it was off to Derby – yes, it’s on the western coast of Australia! Arrived latish in the arvo and watched some of the tide go down. Out here the tides are huge, at up to 11m or so, but it is a mudflat/mangrove area, not a nice beach! There wasn’t a lot to do in Derby, aside from try and negotiate a discount on a trip to Horizontal Falls for the family. Things are quiet for the tour operators, and I’d heard of big discounts for some flights from Kununurra, but no luck here. The old proper sounding lady wasn’t the type to negotiate a discount (well $50 on a few $k…), so we all miss out on the seaplane flight and jet boat ride Daniel had been pleading for (he pleads for everything – you’d think we hadn’t done anything these hols, lol).

Even went to the airport/hangers, but after chatting to one or two it was clear we weren’t going to get anything cheap (did you know a set of helicopter blades cost $120k and get replaced every two years, a helicopter service is $10k and insurance on two choppers is $90k per year?). We looked at a few things Monday, including the Derby prison tree, then headed on our way towards Broome.

Boab prison tree at Derby.

Broome, ahhh, finally, a real beach again! A famous one at that! We plan to spend a little while around here.

Cable Beach