Stats Overview
Km's Travelled: 694
Km's Hiked: 19
No. of Campsites: 3
The Adventures
This week has been an exciting week of milestones for us. We have made it across the border into Western Australia and, most importantly, we have both finally caught some fish!! Will promised that we wouldn't go home until we had both caught a fish and, with our success rate over the past 6 months, I was beginning to worry we were going to become permanent nomads! As we have finally made it to WA here are some fun facts for those interested, so far we have travelled 25,082kms, hiked 337kms, visited 30 National Parks and used 3694 litres of diesel (our most expensive refill was $2.95/L). We spend so much of our time planning where we will be going next, that it has been a nice change to actually reflect on where we have been so far. We are pretty impressed with what we have achieved and are very excited to see the many more wonderful places we will get to explore during the next 6 months!
We started off our week still in the Northern Territory where we spent some time exploring both the Gregory and Keep River National Parks. We completed a few hikes where we were rewarded with some incredible views. We also stumbled across a hike which took us through an oasis of palm trees grown under the protection of a rock face. It reminded us of Palm Valley near Alice Springs but was even more beautiful. We hadn't heard of either of these National Parks before we drove past them, but as you will see in the pictures below, we were very glad we made the detour to visit them.
After our unexpected detours, we made our way across the border into Western Australia. Our first destination in WA was to visit Lake Argyle, one of Australia's largest man-made reservoirs. If you want an idea of the size of Lake Argyle, it holds a volume of water which is over 18 times the size of Sydney Harbour - so it's pretty big! We had a wonderful couple of days exploring the area and were continually in awe of the views we saw - it is definitely one of the most picturesque spots we have seen. On a whim, we even ended up hiring a kayak to get out on the water and explore it further. We certainly felt tiny when we were in our kayak and, with an approximate depth of 20m in some places, I was terrified we were going to capsize as Will wouldn't sit still in the boat! Fortunately we stayed dry (except for when we stopped for a swim) and had heaps of fun getting out to the islands and exploring some of the peninsulas of the lake. Although, truth be told, we could barely move the next day as we are apparently not "kayak fit"!
We have now made it to Kununurra where we think we will be setting up camp for the next few days at least. The Kimberley region is currently experiencing some unseasonably heavy rainfall, which means we can't get to all the places we want to at the moment. We have had to cancel our booking at Purnululu NP and the Gibb River Road has been closed, so our two big ticket items for the region are currently off the table. The rain is supposed to be clearing by the weekend, so we are just going to wait the weather out and see what happens. Having said that, we are really loving Kununurra and are having a great time exploring all the places it has on offer. Especially all the fishing spots, as we have had some success at a few places now. We are of the opinion that there are worse places we could be stuck in than where we currently are!
Kodak Moments
 |
| How incredible is that view! So worth the detour to explore. - Gregory NP |
 |
| There were hundreds of palms growing near the shelter of the rock face - Gregory NP |
 |
| Views like this definitely made it harder to say goodbye to the NT - Gregory NP |
 |
| If we don't make it to Purnululu NP, at least we got to see the "Mini Bungle Bungles" in the NT - Keep River NP |
 |
| We had the biggest wraps to use up the last of our veg before crossing the border! - NT/WA Border |
 |
| We made it to WA! |
 |
| This has to be Australia's most beautiful dam - Lake Argyle |
 |
| Giving our arms a break to enjoy the scenery - Lake Argyle |
 |
| At least the sunset was worth taking a seat in amongst the spinifex grass - Lake Argyle |
 |
| The sunsets are so good I had to include a second picture! - Lake Argyle |
 |
| It was so hard waking up to a view like this one! - Lake Argyle |
 |
| Will with one of his catch (If only he could get a half decent photo of me with my fish!) - Kununurra |
 |
| The famous Ivanhoe Crossing which is currently impassable. You can just see a local standing in the middle fishing...Ivanhoe is known for its crocs! - Kununurra |
Comments
Post a Comment