Darwin to Kununurra

Hi again
We left Darwin Monday and made it to Timber Creek, stopping off at Adelaide River to visit the War Cemetery there.  A beautiful memorial to the many who lost their lives defending our country.  Was particularly awestruck by the youth represented in the headstones.  So many young men cut down in the prime of their lives.

Timber Creek was a great stopover - parked on the banks of the Victoria River, (albeit we could not actually see the river) but the "beware of crocodiles" signs, along with the frequent rustling in the bushes beyond our caravan made us quite OK about that.  It was hot when we arrived (over 35) but the evening brought a dramatic drop in temperature to about 14, so much so that Trevor lit a small fire & wiled away the evening enjoying that.

Tuesday morning we headed west for Lake Argyle, passing over the border into WA and having to relinquish most of the contents of our veggie drawer in the fridge as well as our fruit bowl.  Silly people, we hadn't taken note of the quarantine requirements and had re-stocked (pardon the pun) our supplies of fresh fruit and veg in Katherine & Darwin.  We did salvage a few things by cuttting the tops off the carrots, peeling the onions and a few potatoes.  The sweet potato and pumpkin were passed though - go figure. Anyway it only amounted to about $20 so small fee for our lack of research I guess!

Lake Argyle is spectacular, stretching as far as the eye can see, and reminded me a lot of the Aswan Dam in Egypt in it's remote & rugged beauty.  We drove to the dam  (which I'm told our honourable Prime Minister visited yesterday), watched the sun set from the top of a challenging 4WD track, complete with bottle of red for the occasion, and swum in the stunning Infinity Pool overlooking the lake at the Lake Argyle Caravan Park, where we stayed the night.

 It's pretty warm up here, so our walk yesterday morning happened at about 7.30am when we climbed to the lookout overlooking the Ord River Gorge.  Very spekky and well worth the effort. Such a wildly magnificent part of the country.  So different from the grandeur of NZ Fiords or European mountains, but equally as spectacular.

We left Lake Argyle about 9.30am and were surprised at the number of vehicles heading in, but of course they were probably transporting all the hangers on or media covering the visit of our illustrious leader !! Which by the way we didn't hear a whisper about while at the Lake.

Now in Kununurra, and enjoying a very pleasant spot on the Lake just opposite the town.  It looks pretty harmless being covered to a large degree with lilly pads or some other water plant, but rife with mossies at sundown (which we have largely avoided by copious amounts of repellant.)  However our neighbour informed us this evening that the saw an unsuspecting ibis snatched by a freshwater croc just meters away from us.  Scarey considering we were watching a girl standing on a paddle board out there at the same time yesterday !!

Tomorrow we are driving to El Questro, & taking a cruise on the Chamberlain River later in the afternoon.  Some great stuff to visit, but also very pleasant days drive in the air conditioned car :-)
News of this next time.....

"Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong, under the shade of a coolibah tree...."