Saturday 6
July 2013
Windjana
Gorge/Tunnel Creek
Up at 6am at Derby Caravan park campsite talthough movement in
the camp from 4.30am. Lindsay up and washed at 5.30am – could not sleep as well
due to noise of indigenous locals until 5.30am. Yelling, arguing, drunken state
– they were not in the camp but the noise was from the town. As we have found
noise travels further in the night time when all is quiet. We decided to have
breakfast in the park before departure from Derby. Cereal and coffee. Departed
8am after problems with tying off tyres with restraining straps and also tying
of the broken riveted latch base for the spare wheel arm. Robert identified
using a hose clamp to stop it popping out. We have decided to remove the arm off
the rear of the trailer and to strap onto the front of the trailer attached to
its spare wheel. We finally got away from town after visiting the local Mitre
10 shop to purchase the hose clamp and multigrips for the job. We were successful
with this idea.
Drove to Windjana Gorge which was 144km from the Derby Road turnoff.
It took us about 2 and half hours. We had bitumen over several sections and the
road was corrugated and very rough. It was a good intro for what we would be in
later on in the trip as Paul stated. We decided to uncouple the trailer at
Windjana Gorge camp ground and left it locked up. We had morning tea then
decided to have an early lunch of tuna, salad and bread. We drove to Tunnel
Creek some 35km distance (70km return). The road was very rough and it was good
to drive without the trailer attached. The tunnel creek carpark was packed and
it was like a coles carpark. We had a heap of people in front of us and had to
wait for some time to start our walk. The walk itself was for a distance of
750m underground through water and sand and low overhanging limestone rock. It
could have been a surreal experience in the dark but with all the torches from
all of the people they looked like glowworms.
We pulled off the road to check out an abandoned building
and it took some time to get back onto the Tunnel Creek road – 12 cars drove
past each with a dust trail for several hundred metres so you can imagine how
long we had to wait. School holidays are on in both WA and NT and most living
locally are taking advantage of the cooler weather. That is if you can call
31-34 degrees cool.
We drove back to Windjana and set up our camp. In the cooler
evening we decided to walk to the gorge and take some photos. The light was
fantastic and the evening sun lit up the gorge and the colours in the rock
walls. We all got some great photos including the freshwater crocs. The walk
into the gorge was short only being about 500m although there was a walking
track that went in several kms. That evening we had Apricot Chicken for dinner
– thank you Lucy – nothing left as everybody was hungry. We topped off with
beer and red wine. The DEC campground for which we paid $8 each per night had
hot showers, flushing toilets and solar. The camp was full and works on a first
come first serve basis.
A bonus for all of us was being able to ring through to home
via mobiles on Optus but not Telstra. This was an accidental discovery by Paul
as he and I have Optus but Robert has Telstra. Paul phoned home first, then I
did – we felt sorry for Robert so I gave him my mobile to call home. We later
found out from the local ranger that a nearby diamond mine had Optus
facilities.
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