Well, we almost made it to WA on Wednesday (27/8), but 2km’s prior to the border we turned off the hwy and headed into Keep River National Park instead! Never heard of it? Neither had we till today… Mentioned amongst other things, the NT Parks brochure describes it as having geological features similar to the Bungle Bungles. Given that it looks like most of the Kimberleys and surrounding areas (including the Bungle Bungles) are 4wd only (which we don’t have….), it seemed like a good idea to us to give it a look!

But to backtrack a bit first, we spent Tues night at a free roadside campsite about 100km’s out of Katherine. It wasn’t bad or anything, but we should have kept going for another 58km’s, and stopped at the Mary River Roadhouse. Quite a beautiful location, with the river and the surrounding rocky outcrops, which are part of Gregory National Park. The terrain actually starts changing a bit earlier than this, with interesting rocky hills/outcrops/ranges, in between the long grassy flatter areas, beginning to take the place of the flatter scrubby rolling hills. I suspect this is the beginning of what we can expect in the Kimberleys!

It is a little reminiscent of the MacDonnell Ranges, but the surrounding land is more vegetated. It was whilst driving through the Gregory National Park that we first started noticing masses of Boab trees. Check out the size of this one, which was in a campsite on the Victoria River that we dropped in to have a look at (but a bit early in the day to stop).

The road into the Keep River NP campsite (well, the closest campsite…) was 18km’s of dirt. It was in just acceptable condition for the motorhome – but wouldn’t want it any worse…. We did a 2km loop walk through the sandstone rock formations in the arvo, which was quite pretty.

There was a ranger talk at night (last one of the year!), and it was good to learn a bit more about the park, the flora & fauna, and its management. We decided against doing an extra 16km’s in the dirt (each way), to look at the next campsite and do the extra walks there. I was up for sunrise, capturing some more photos:

Mid Thursday morning we finally made it into WA, after having to hand over a couple of potatoes and some honey…. We knew the potatoes would have to go (didn’t feel like having them the nights before), but the unopened honey jar was a waste of money! We knew about the quarantine restrictions well beforehand (except for the honey….), but it was surprising the number of people who told us they got caught out not knowing, with heaps of fruit and vegies! Maybe we are more sociable with other travelers than we realise!!