Today we reached the Gibb River Road. Two years of planning (somewhat weakly as my better half says), dreaming, and reading as much as we could get our hands on. We left Broome, and headed to Derby for a refuel and then a 5km backtrack to the start of the Gibb.
And its just another bitchumen road. What the hell has gone wrong!
Well it is for the first 50km. Then the gravel starts. And it steadily gets harder. Here we go, it’s getting fun. After more roadworks, they seem to have cursed this trip, we get to Tunnel Gorge. This is a naturally occurring tunnel, formed by water over the centuries that goes for about 750m. The creek that has formed it still runs through it, providing a rare chance to walk a tunnel that has a creek and bats flying through it.
To make it even more interresting there are stalagmites and stalactites throughout the tunnel, along with waterfalls in a couple of spots.
The most interesting ones that we saw were the ones on the waterfall that weer inside the tunnel. These were little more than shelves of rock about six feet above the creek, but also highly impressive. At the far end of Tunnel Gorge was my first look at Aboriginal Art.
From here we went to Windjana Gorge for overnight camping. We had a small fire in one of the campsites, and went over the plans for the next day. Whilst doing this and getting stuck intosome raviolli and sauce we had a kangaroo bounce out of the bush about ten metres from us, before bounding away across the campground.
I also got to try out something I had been considering since the start of this trip, camping Ugg boots. They are keeping my feet toasty warm, and for a $25 buy, are up there with the best purchases of the trip, and mean i can keep my good Uggs for at home in the house.