4th day on Lake Argyle

It looked like we will take off last night, the wind gusts were incredible and we were just waiting for the camper to collapse on us.
Got woken up by the rising sun so decided to head to the infinity pool to do some nut butter photo shoot, only to discover that we were too early (that’s a first) and the pool was still closed. The photo shoot progressed regardless with some improvisation…
Instead of the pool dip, we grabbed our yoga mats and exercised under the boab tree which was very nice.
After breakfast we headed a few kilometres down the road to the Durack’s homestead to get some facts about this rather interesting Lake Argyle. The homestead was 80% made from the original homestead built by the Durack family and was actually flooded in the lake. Every single stone was removed and transported to Kununurra where it was stored before relocated closer to Lake Argyle and rebuilt. Patrick Durack, Irish man, bought the land in late 1800 and decided to move his stock from Queensland over to the Kimberley. They planed the move will take about six months but in the end it took 2.5 years. They lost most of the stock on the way and although he was a rich man in Queensland, due to some poor decisions made by his brother, he lost everything and had to start from scratch again. Lucky he put the land in Kimberley in his son’s name so he did not lose this too. Anyhow, they were a rather big family and in the end they sold the land to the government. Gosh what a hard life they had, working their guts out in terrible conditions.
The homestead also had a video playing about the actual built of the Lake Argyle dam wall. How very interesting. We just cannot imagine how it could flood so quickly that people had to move in a hurry and animals had to be rescued (operation Noah). Lake Argyle is classified as open sea and we have been told the waves can be 2-3 m high and winds can be incredibly strong.
After the homestead we headed to Kununurra to meet up with our friends Kim and Chris. They rescued us during our last road trip to Karijini when they appeared from nowhere and helped us to sort out our punctured tyre situation. They are from Melbourne and have stayed with us on the farm about a month ago when they took an extra detour on their travel to come and see us. They have flown into Kununurra from Broome today and will hop on a week long cruise going around the top end of Northern Western Australia. We picked them up from their hotel and headed for the lunch at the Hootchery, the oldest continuously operating legal still in Western Australia. The time with them was great and I feel very lucky we bumped into them and remained friends. Hopefully we will see them again sometime.
We arrived back to the camp ground to find it deserted! Yey people are gone! I used the opportunity to fly the drone quickly as I knew the helicopter flights were not in the air as the pilot took a day off today…
We now just sit outside, drink some beer to deter any MVE infected mosquitoes and watch the sky full of stars. It is a first night when its dark enough for the stars to make their full appearance. The cards are on the table, waiting for the score to be turned…hehehehe….Read more