Lake Argyle - Ord River

We spent several days in the wonderful town of Kununurra, an attractive town on Lake Kununurra on the Ord River. It is near the vast man made lake - Lake Argyle. Kununuarra is the Kimberley's gateway to the east. The word Kununurra is an Aboriginal name meaning 'the meeting of big waters' , and boy are there some big waters' here. The Ord River was damed in 1971 to form a storage reservoir supplying water to one of Australia's largest and most ambitious irrigation schemes. ' Argyle Downs', a one million acre cattle station, was flooded to create a vast and beautiful lake, the biggest man-made lake in Australia. It was a dream of pioneer pastoralist Kimberley Durack that led to its infancy which was later fully established. We took a full day tour which included a morning of spectacular cruising on the Ord River from Kununurra to Ord River dam. We had fantastic commentary from the skipper, of course his name was Grant. He not only gave us a history lesson, maths lesson -heaps of figures in regard the actual water storage , he was constantly spotting so many different birds, our favourite would have to be the magnificent sea eagles. Also fresh water crocs, wallabies and other wildlife. We then joined an afternoon cruise/ sunset / swim on Lake Argyle -and yes you guessed it another fabulous sunset watched whilst consuming wine and cheese. Lake Argyle covers a massive area approx 75 km long, 40 km wide and if you decided to take a walk around it, you would cover nearly 900 km, that's a decent morning's walk ! At capacity it holds approximately 20 times the size of Sydney Harbour - it is currently well above capacity. The entire system works on gravitational flow, which terminates into the farming irrigation channels. Some of the crops grown are , mangos, bananas, Chia, sandalwood, pawpaw, vegetables to name a few. there is a camp ground and resort at the small village town of Argyle, which boasts quite an amazing infinity pool. Some of the other attractions we visited whilst in Kununurra were , a sandalwood farm / shop, the Hoochery distillery-serving samples of their award winning rum. We drove north to look at Wyndham, geographically the northern most town of The West and visited the very touristy El Questro. As you would know the area is home to the Argyle diamond mine, home to the famous Argyle pink diamonds-Duncan was always a little too busy to go diamond shopping ! Kununurra and the surrounding region is such a beautiful and still relatively untouched land-we loved it.Read more