Josh was up early this morning
and took off with the car to find a tyre shop.
Fortunately the Tyre Power that he pulled up in, had the Cooper’s that
we were after. He bought 2 new tyres
costing over $800 – money that could have gone into fuel (bugger). Whilst there he got chatting (as he does) to
the guy in the workshop that used to be a mechanic at Argyle Motors, and
together they also adjusted the hand-break which had been bothering him for a
while. Fortunately, all this was done
and Josh was back at the van by 9amish.
In the meantime, I’d tidied and gathered the latest school work for
returning at Kununurra Post Office before heading off. We parted ways with the Harris family this
morning, who were staying in Kununurra to do a flight over the Bungle Bungles
and then the sunset cruise on Lake Argyle, whilst we were heading south by car
and walking into the Bungle Bungles. We
drove for about 3 hours (somewhere along here we passed by the Argyle Diamond
Mine - there are no signs to point out the entrance) before going about 500
metres past the Purnululu entrance and pulling up at a free camp called Spring
Creek. It was pretty crowded but we
managed to squeeze our van in on the lower section where it was much shadier
than the top area. We set up camp,
checked out a few cows which had come into the camp area, chatted to a few
other campers including a family that we’d met at Lake Argyle with a daughter
Maddi (and she was pleased to see the girls again) and then settled in for
dinner and a game of Trivial Pursuit – yes, Josh won again!
The following morning we had
decided to get up and leave pretty early as we knew that it was a fairly long
dirt road into the Bungle Bungles.
However, even though we woke around 6am, we stayed in bed for nearly
another 2 hours…. it was freezing, well under 20 degrees!! When
we finally surfaced, had our big breakfast and prepared lunches, we were ready
to go around 8.30am. The drive from the
highway into the Visitor Centre was about 53kms, full of rocks, plenty of
corrugations and a whole lot of twists and bends. About half hour into our trip we came to a
screaming halt when Sami announced that she wasn’t feeling well. I swapped seats with her and we pushed on –
she made it with a clean bill of health – thankfully! We checked ourselves into the national park,
paying the relevant small fees, and, with Sami in the front seat, we followed
our map about 20kms further to the far northern point, Echidna Chasm. We followed a rocky river bed for about 500
metres before coming to a small cave in the side of one of the large rocky
mountains. We continued on past many
small palms and found our way to a large crack in the side of a huge mountain. The walls of this crack showed the mountain
formation made of thousands of varied sized rocks which had been compound with
sand and sediment around 360 million years ago.
It is incredible and stunning all at once. The crack in the mountain gets narrower and
narrower the farther in you walk. About
half way into the chasm, there was a larger sitting area where quite a bit of
light was let in, quite a few tourists had stopped and seated themselves here
to simply admire the beauty. We walked
further in and climbed a few ladders along the way, before reaching the end of
he chasm and turning back to view it all again from a different angle. Upon reaching our starting point, we veered
off to the right to head up a hill to Osmand Lookout. It was all very pretty. Back in the car, we drove towards the
Visitors Centre and pulled into another lookout off to the right. The call was made “last one to the top was a
rotten egg” so we all took off but Sami left her car door open… Josh (being out the same side of the car) had
to hang back and close her door while the rest of us took off (might I add that
I was carrying the camera bag and camera.
About one third of the way up Sami gave up and plonked herself down on
the dirt track – she’d had enough. Zoe
was way ahead and I got past Sami and slowed down yelling words of
encouragement for her to get back up and keep racing, Dad was still behind
her. She wasn’t interested – Zoe was
about two thirds of the way up the hill and Josh had already sprinted past me
and was on the heels of Zoe… and finally overtook her. Good work Josh – winner, winner, chicken
dinner! The downfall was that he was
coughing up dust for the next couple of hours to compensate. Sami eventually made it to the top of the
hill before we took some mandatory photos and descended again. Next we drove to the southern part of the
Bungle Bungle park. It was about 27kms
past the Visitor Centre in another direction.
We drove to the carpark that takes you to the walks for the Domes and
the Cathedral. Before doing these walks
we grabbed our lunch and sat at the shaded lunch areas. Our first walk of this area was through the
Domes, with the sun glistening down on the black and orange stripes of each of
these spectacular rocks. About half way
around the loop, we ventured off on the other park that takes you to the
Cathedral. It is about a 1km walk –
fairly easy – over lots of big flat rocks and along other pathways that sit
amongst lots of high grass, up a few ladders and finally to a large sandy beach
area with a big shallow lagoon in the centre.
The Cathedral is a massive rock which the bottom section eroded leaving
an overhang over the shallow water.
There was a lovely reflection of the rocks coming off the water and
fortunately we were the only ones here at this time enjoying the serenity. Sami, as she does, was happy to sit in the
sand and get dirty whilst ignoring the rest of us, Zoe was happy playing
photographer on her iPod and Josh and I were wandering around stunned at the
beauty of this place. We walked back out
towards the carpark stopping to toss around the idea of doing one more walk but
as it was getting later in the day, we opted out - probably for the best. It was around 4.30pm by the time we got back
to the car and we still had 27km of dirt track back to the Visitors Centre, then
a further 53kms of dirt bendy road back to the caravan. Sami took up the front seat again while Zoe
and I watched a movie in the back.
Before too long it was dark and Josh was carefully watching for the
kangaroos. We’d passed the Visitor
Centre and about 40kms beyond, when again Sami announced that she wasn’t
feeling well. Josh pulled over in the
dark and out she hopped. I got out and
walked around to check on her (getting bindies in my feet along the way) and
after a few deep breaths, I talked her into getting back into the car – we
didn’t have far to go. She was our
helper to open and shut the “Mabel Downs” gate when we reached the end of the
road and fortunately again made it to the end without letting anything
out. It was freezing by the time we got
back to the van, and being at a free-camp had no power to use the reverse
air-conditioning to warm up our home.
Maddi had come to see if the kids wanted to play so we had a quick
dinner and Josh and Sami went to their camp to sit by the fire and Sami played
a few games of Trouble before returning.
By this stage, Zoe and I had showered and snuggled in my bed with our
jumpers on to keep warm. Josh and Sami
had their showers and gotten into bed with us.
Luckily the expanda bed held the weight of all four of us for a while –
and eventually the kids found their own beds for the night – ours was snuggly
warm with two doonas on it.
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