El Questro

Monday 22 July 2013

El Questro

Up at first light at Hope Valley Station with a breakfast of an egg on toast enjoyed by all. As we only had a short distance to cover today there was no urgency in breaking camp. After breakfast we decided to drive out to the lookout to the Cockburn Ranges to see if we could get a Telstra signal on Rob’s phone. Last night I had seen a tourist sitting at the site when I was taking photos of the evening light on the ranges and heard her say that she had two bars on her Telstra dongle. I also remembered reading somewhere that people were able to pick up a Telstra signal here some 90km distance from Wyndham as there was no interruption to the signal. Rob was successful and he had a good chat to Lee.

We returned to camp and then took a drive to the Pentecost River to view some of the other camp sites that were available. Whilst there are crocs in the river, several people were barramundi fishing. We headed back to the station, packed up and headed out onto the Gibb road. This last section of road was some of the worst that we have encountered as far as rock and corrugation goes. We were thankful it was relatively short as something would have or should have given. Perhaps everything that was to go wrong with the trailer has gone wrong. And yes when we arrived at El Questro we found that the shackles at the end of the suspension limiting chains on the underside of the trailer had unscrewed and fallen off. Paul was concerned that without these we would do further damage to the trailer if we continued on the rough roads.

Dingo (one of many seen on roadside)

Corrugation and more corrugation on the Gibb

Pentecost River crossing

We were quite impressed with El Questro as we drove the 16km into the campsite at the Station house. The road was in good condition compared with the Gibb. We managed to secure a site and paid $60 for a car permit for three days followed by $20pp per day for 3 days ($180) for a campsite. The campground is one of the better ones we have encountered and comes with lots of shade, excellent ablutions and tap water. The place is a tourist mecca with all requirements being catered for – helicopter/fixed wing flights, tours by 4wd and boat, and up market accommodation at the station house overlooking the Chamberlain Gorge for $2500 per day. So we cannot complain at what we are paying. Another problem for us was that the shop had very limited resupplies of food and drink and what they had was very expensive.

Campsite El Questro

El Questro station

We are located 110km from Kununurra but given the need to purchase some replacement shackles and a new lead connector as well as buying food and alcohol we decided to head into town. We have not been able to purchase alcohol anywhere since we left Derby and once we ran out of our initial supplies we have been on the dry. I do need to correct myself however – at two of the cattle stations we stayed at – Drysdale River Station and Hope Valley Station, we have purchase drinks from the bar but only to drink at the bar. They did not sell retail. We decided to head into town and much to our surprise, once we got to the turnoff to the Gibb, we were on bitumen. What a surprise as we had expected a corrugated road for 36km until we reached the Wyndham-Kununurra Road. Anyway we took advantage of this and were soon in Kununurra where we quickly located a Coles and purchase food and drink. We also needed cash as there are no ATMs on the Gibb and if they are to be found, they are all U/S. We were able to top up the kitty as some of us were in debit. Paul also located an Auto Pro store and purchased his requirements and we finally filled the tank with diesel for $1.91 a litre. We headed home and noted a large bushfire burning in the vicinity of Emma Gorge – which means the Gorge has been closed for a couple of days. Hopefully it will not impact on us as we plan to see them on Thursday on our drive into Kununurra.

We returned to the campsite around 6pm and I quickly cooked a dinner of tuna mornay. Very tasty and nothing left after the boys hoed into it. Given that we were nearly off the Gibb we decided to have a celebration drink and enjoyed some Jacobs Creek Cab Merlot 2011 followed by several cans of cold VB. We had visitors to our campsite last night as one of our neighbours had refilled the generator while we were gone into town and he got it started for us. He used his own unleaded fuel so we thought one good turn deserved another and we gave him a couple of cold VBs. We have come across many campers in their 70s – retired who keep returning to the north for their holidays and they travel in packs with their mates. There were four in this group and we have seen them on and off during our trek out from Derby. They reckon they had a good laugh at us at King Edward River crossing when we first arrived and were trying to work out which way to park the trailer in order to minimise the sun and maximise our shade. You can imagine with 3 strong willed blokes all with an opinion it must have looked funny. Of course we saw the funny side in their comments and that just led to an excuse to have another beer. We were up late celebrating and must have been a bit noisy as we did not get to bed until around 11pm – the camp had been quiet since 8pm. We recalled lying in bed on previous nights listening to other noisy campers and quietly cursing them for their noise but it was our turn last night together with our immediate neighbours to play up.