Day 133–137 4th – 8th Aug; Kununurra

Heading north along the Great Northern Highway saw us entering into the landscape of the Kimberley, with red stained rocky mountain escarpments and hills covered with golden coloured spinifex and Mitchell grass. The highway wound its way through and past the O’Donnell, King Leopold and the Carr Boyd Mountain Ranges, not far from the Argyle Diamond Mine. We stopped at Warmun (Turkey Creek) for a bite to eat and to top up with fuel. We managed the bite to eat, but they were out of unleaded fuel. Luckily I had just enough in the tank to make it to the next roadhouse (Doon Doon) 95 km’s away. From here it was an hour or so into Kununurra.
We arrived there around mid afternoon and had decided to check out the “Big 4” caravan park, Ivanhoe Village Tourist Park, knowing that it was shady and had a nice pool! We were shown our site down in the camper trailer section of the park and immediately introduced ourselves to the people who backed on to us, David (Chook) and Rachel McGrinder and their 2 young children Maddy and Lachlan. Maddy was the same age as Jassy, so the connection was made!! Before setting up though I quickly changed the damaged camper tyre so that it could be repaired.
Kununurra was a great place. It has a very relaxed feel and is located on Lake Kununurra, which is some 60 km below Lake Argyle on the Ord River. Lake Kununurra was developed when Lake Argyle was built in order to catch the extra water from Lake Argyle that could not be stored in that lake. The town has just about everything you need, (except a Mitsubishi Dealer), as well as some nice cafes and knick knack shops and the visitors centre is very good as well. Kununurra is the jump off point for many of the tours that you can do of the Kimberley, Bungles, etc., so it has a major airport that can handle jet aircraft.
Once again we were using our stay in Kununurra as a stocking up point before heading west along the Gibb River Road later in the week, so we made the most of some “free” time there to swim, shop, grab some internet time and for the older girls to catch up on some school work. I got my tyres checked and rotated which was due having at this stage travelled some 15,000 km on them since leaving Melbourne. We also did some sightseeing, making our way out to Lake Argyle for a look. Here we called in for a look at the old Durack Family Homestead, which was shifted to its present site when the building of the dam flooded its original position. The lake is just huge. Apparently during flood times its capacity is 70 times that of Sydney Harbour!!!!!!!! We also went out to the local melon farm at Ivanhoe to sample their wares and down to the Ord River at Ivanhoe Crossing.We quickly became friendly with the McGrinders, who hail from Esperance in W.A., and before too long Andrea and Rachel were organizing drinks, nibbles and dinners between the 2 families. David or Chook as he likes to be called and Rachel were planning on heading down the Gibb Road as well, but were going to leave a day or 2 before us. However Rachel contracted some type of stomach bug which laid her low for a day or so and this meant that their departure time would now be the same as us. So that settled it, we were traveling together for the Gibb Trip. We decided that we would allow about 5 -6 days for this trip and so set about stocking up for it ready to leave on Friday morning.