It was so good to be sleeping
back in the van last night rather than on our deflating air mattresses. We were in bed just after 8.30pm and didn’t
get up until around 7am. There wasn’t
much to do this morning except wait for the Harris’s to arrive. It was around mid-morning when we heard them
radio through to us and they were on their way in – phew! They set up the caravan while Josh went for a
quick run back 7kms to the roadhouse to pick up a few groceries. Unfortunately, he didn’t get there. Instead, he’d heard a knock from under the
car and so turned back towards the caravan to see what it was. It turns out that both rear lower shock
bushes (which he’d only replaced whilst in Cairns) had worn completely
through. We didn’t have any spares so he
had to work out a way to replace these.
Josh came up with a solution – we had a couple of pairs of spare thongs
and a neighbour had some rubber matting so he went to work and made some new
suspension bushes. He cut and rolled the
rubber to make the bush and cut the thongs for the ends. Whilst doing that, Shaun went over his rig
and noticed that the van had cracked the leaf spring mount off the chassis,
also due to corrugations. After asking
around, Shaun found a fellow, Hank, that had a welder on board and so he too
went about fixing his problems. In the
meantime, I went about a bit of cooking (not my finest work) to pass the
time. Josh ended up making the 7km trek
to the Mt Barnett Roadhouse later this afternoon, taking Zoe, Sami and Olivia
with him. There was even a Dutch guy
working in the roadhouse so, to Olivia’s surprise, Josh got talking to the
young guy in their own little language. He
had picked up some delicious fruit as well as a few other supplies just to get
us through a few more days. Upon his
return, it had become quite hot so we all went for the short 100 metre walk to
the river for the cool refreshing swim and got chatting to other travellers to
find out what we had to look forward to at the other end of the Gibb River
Road. Tonight, the adults sat up
chatting while the kids played a music game, I think it was even after 10pm
that we went to bed.
Another week began, and this lovely
Monday morning we were still at Manning Gorge intending to do the walk into the
gorge early in the morning, then pack and leave by around lunch time to
continue on the journey. We were up
early and so I decided that seeing as though I hadn’t seen a laundry for a
while, that I would use our little washing machine to get a few things
de-dusted. I got through most of it and
the water was every time I refilled the water, it was absolutely filthy! It was good to get that out of the way. It was getting on and we didn’t end up
leaving until about 9am, but off we went and the weather was heating up. In order to start this walk, you have to
cross the river, and as it was hot we opted to swim across. However, we were carrying a bag of water, the
camera bag, a towel, etc. so we put these things into the boat with Shaun and
Liz to avoid them getting wet. On the
other side, we dried off a little, got dressed, loaded ourselves up with bags
again and set off. It was quite hot by
now and we had about a 2.5km walk into the waterfall. It wasn’t a hard walk although there was a
bit of a downhill towards the end. Josh
and the kids jumped straight into the water before they even saw the waterfall
and it was a quite a way around the bend to the actual waterfall so Shaun, Liz
and myself picked up all the bags and bits and pieces to walk around the rock
ledge to the other side. In doing so,
Liz had a bit of a fall and damaged a few fingers but we patched her up and she
was up quickly and soldiered on. Around
the other side was magnificent. There
was a big splash pool area, lots of sunshine and a huge rock wall to jump
from. The rock was quite dark and smooth
and there were only a few families already here to share this fantastic spot
with. There were a lot of ledges to jump
from all at different heights and Sami was a bit unsure and scared about how
long she would be under the water so her and I gradually advanced up a few
small ledges to her comfort zone.
However, Josh was straight in from one of the highest ledges that even
some little kids were jumping off. Walk
straight up and just jump, sounds like the best strategy however if it was me,
I would have stood on the edge for a very long time considering my options…
funny how you change as you get older.
Zoe jumped off the second highest ledge just before leaving but just the
once as we had to get back, pack the van and move on to the next stop. We began heading back through the bush bound
for the river crossing and into the camp where our van was. We’d cooked up some sausages, had lunch and
started to pack up the van when the Harris’s returned. There was a change of plans when they had
returned as they felt it was getting too late to move on so we unpacked again
but ready enough to leave early the next morning. Late this afternoon, we sat and watched the
movie Red Dog… we are getting closer to Dampier now. After having dinner, the girls had an early
night to bed and Josh and I sat up to watch another movie – Josh didn’t make
the end of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment