Kimberley 2023

Another very windy night and morning…. Gosh we were so lucky with the weather for the swim. By the way the results are in and the Moirskateers Team ended up in an amazing 6th position in the 20km quad swim (out of 27 teams) with the final time of 5 hours, 33 min, 20 seconds. Overall, in 65th position from a total of 122 teams.

We packed up at Lake Argyle and headed to Kununurra, having a short stop at the Hootchery again to buy something something for someone 🤫. We have arrived to the KimberleyLand caravan park just before lunch time. We left the trailer there and headed to Wyndham, the most northerly located town in Western Australia. The drive there took a good hours and was another display of a beautiful scenery. Wyndham was interesting, quite run down but had some good history. Established in 1884 when gold was discovered in Halls Creek. The original town is now called Wyndham Port Town with only a handful of people there (although there was rather large police station…), the town moved more inland to Wyndham 3 mile. They moved the town as the daily tides risen and fell by 8.3 meters and because of that the original town was not able to be expanded. Wyndham is one of the hottest places in Western Australia with the average daily maximum temperature reaching 36 degrees. Luckily for us, it was balmy 28 degrees today - almost jumper time…hahaha.
We visited the small museum in the original Wyndham that had quite interesting stuff there. They even had a ‘Czechoslovakian’ gun made in Brno on display. Heaps of old photos and some old cigaret commercials with totally unacceptable slogan’s if judged by today’s standards. We also saw Kim and Chris’s boat parked in the harbour waiting for the passengers to arrive.
On the way from the original Wyndham we stopped by in a cool caravan park to have a look at the biggest boab tree… it was big indeed!
Oh and I almost forgot to mention the unforgettable lunch at the local bakery… Kat had a barramundi pie and I tried the crocodile pie….it was… different, unusual… ok…. Not to be repeated any time soon,
Before leaving the ‘newer Wyndham’ we drove up to the 5 river look out. Pretty steep drive up the hill with fantastic views across the land. Pretty spectacular and would be interesting to see that when it is flooded.
We then headed back to Kununurra but felt tempted by the Parry Lagoon Park so we turned off on dirt road and travelled to Marlgu Billabong. It was a 6km one way dirt road in the middle of nowhere. The first lookout was at the Old Telegraph Line and we were quite stunned by the view. Heaps of boabs and wetland in front of us. We saw another car in the distance and decided to continue on the dirt road until it finished. We arrived at the billabong and it was absolutely beautiful. So many different birds were flying around, the wetland had a variety of lotus flowers, it was so peaceful with sun going down throwing a orange light on the dried grasses and water. It very much reminded us of Kakadu National Park. We met two local ladies there who confirmed that to their knowledge there are 5 salt water crocodiles living there. Did not see any so we think there were fibbing….hahaha….
Kat drove us back home and again we very much enjoyed the sunset light reflecting on the red rocky boulders. We arrived to Kununurra in dark, assembled our ‘chamber’ and made ourselves a dinner including frozen garlic bread made on a pan…. That was a first and it kinda worked.
We are based next to the lake so mosquitoes are going crazy here, we have lathered ourselves in anti mosquito stuff head to toe, have citronella candles going like there is no tomorrow and also have the mosquito repellent on….. fingers crossed we will survive with no bites. We were also told by the caravan staff there they have 3 fresh weather crocodiles here, one supposedly lives next to our spot… and has no teeth so they call him gummy - poor thing. Hopefully we can see him tomorrow. May prepare some purée snack for him 😉Read more