30 June 2013 – Wyndham

Today we were heading to Wydham with the Harris family.  Wyndham is the most northern big town (so accessible by sealed road).  We piled into our cars after packing our swimmers, towels and food for lunch.  It’s 100kms from Kununurra to Wydham so a little over an hour drive.  We drove out of town and crossed over where the Upper Ord River runs into the Lower Ord River and continued west long the Great Northern Highway.  Whilst driving along, we spotted a cow that had been hit lying along the side of the other side of the road.  It had obviously been sitting here in the sun for quite a while so we turned around and went back for photos – yes gross!!  After crossing a couple more creeks, we came along Molly Spring which was recommended to us by the Visitor Information Centre.  We drove in, parked the car, hiked up the short dirt track before coming to our own little crystal clear waterfall with lagoon.  Josh as usual was first to strip off and jump in, clearing the way for everyone else to follow.  It looked great but a bit cool for me so I gave the swimming a miss and climbed further up the rocky mountain to get the best aerial view while watching the kids (including my big kid) splash about in there while the sun was pelting down.  We had lots more to see and do so only stayed about 40 minutes before continuing on.  Our next stop was “The Grotto” – I’d love to see this in the wet season.  The Grotto is like a big rock mountain with hundreds of layers and colours.  During the wet season, this would be a fast flowing waterfall but the waterfall has completely dried up except for the pool of water below which is a murkish green in colour.  We walked across to the waterfall entrance where the water normally flows and the rocks were shiny and quite flat but not too slippery, so Josh and the kids decided to carefully climb down into the waterfall.    It was amazing to be able to do such a thing in what would normally be a gushing waterfall.  Upon leaving the Grotto, it was about lunch time so we next drove straight into Wyndham and headed for the Five Rivers Lookout which is at the highest point of the Bastion Range (330 high).  This is where there are 5 mighty Kimberley Rivers (Forrest River, Durrack River, King River, Lower Ord River and Pentecost River) that meet and flow out into the ocean.  The view from this lookout also includes overlooking the ports of Wyndham and the mud flats.  We ate our lunch and enjoyed the gorgeous view.  After lunch we went down to the water where there was a floating jetty and the water was gushing very quickly out to sea.  Whilst driving through the town Josh pulled into a local park area and there were hundreds of cockatoos nibbling away at the grass seeds.  We lined the three girls up (Zoe, Sami and Olivia) and told them to charge at the birds to make them fly away.  It was fantastic – it was like a sheet of birds had just lifted up into the sky.  They parted ways into various “cockatoo” trees – very pretty.  Back in town, we stopped at the Big Croc.  This is an icon in Wyndham that stretches 20 metres long and is made of concrete and steel.  It was around 3pm by now and we still wanted to get out to visit the Prison Boab Tree.  This is 23kms off the main road along a dirt track.  We were moving along at a good pace (even overtaking a Holden Commodore along the way) but hadn’t let the tyre pressure down and about half way along the track Josh stated that he thought he had a flat tyre – damn!  We pulled over and sure enough, this was the case.  Sean pulled his car up on the rocky road with us.  A rock had put a pretty big rock through the side wall of our tyre leaving quite a big gash in the rubber.  Sean pulled out his high lift jack to make it easier and both the boys went into action to change the tyre.  It didn’t take too long and we were back on the road, but we felt like this was going to slow us down tomorrow when we planned to take-off to the Bungle Bungles.  We kept on and only about another 8kms, made it to the Prison Boab Tree.  It is huge!!  It is thought to be around 2000 years old and its branches hang wide and low.  There is even a hole in the side of the tree trunk big enough for the kids to climb inside and explore the inside of the tree.  We took some photos and during this time that Holden Commodore with 4 backpackers had caught up to us.  We had wanted to get back to Kununurra for sunset but due to unforseen circumstances, this was not going to happen.  We instead pulled up at an Aboriginal rock art site before making our way back out the dirt road towards the highway.  The sun had set but the scenery was awesome at this time of the evening.  There were a few boab trees along the side of the dirt road with a gorgeous sunset sky backdrop.  By the time we were back on the main road it was dark and therefore a long drive back to Kununurra with us all on roo patrol.  Quite a few bushfires were burning on our way back home which lit the sky up in places, thankfully not enough to get another good view of that cow lying on the side of the road.  Unfortunately when we got back to the vans, Liz noticed that their car freezer/fridge had not been working efficiently and a lot of her food had thawed out and perished – not happy (don’t blame her, money just wasted.  Something I’m wary of seeing as though we are both unemployed).  As I hadn’t been sleeping well lately, I slept in the garage tonight – had such a good sleep.