After a quiet catch-up day on Tuesday, we were on the road for a day trip 100km up the road to Wyndham, the most northern town in WA. Our first stop in Wyndham is the big croc, a 20m long statue that greets visitors to the town. Here we saw a local Aboriginal man brilliantly carving Boab pods, he said that he had been doing it since 5 years of age and he looked about 65 yo.
From there we travel up the Bastion Range to the Five Rivers Lookout. From there we are able to identify the King, Ord, Durack, Forrest, and the Pentacost rivers flowing into the Cambridge Gulf. We also spend time watching numerous industrial activities including a ship being loaded from a barge and roadtrains delivering ? iron ore or bauxite.
On the way out of town, we visited an Afghan Cemetery which contains the graves of the early Afghan settlers & cameleers (1890's) who provided an important means of transport between the cattle stations & the towns of the region. The graves are large due to the lead camel often being buried with it's master.
We turn onto King River Road and travel along salt pans and more corrugations to an Aboriginal Art site and a Prison Tree. It was here that prisoners were detained in the hollow Boab. Past Digger's Rest Station, we travel via the Karunjie Track.
This track is a 52km "short cut" from Wyndham to the Gibb River road however it takes about 3 1/2 hours over not only corrugations, river crossings, deep bull-dust and lots of wash-outs but also offered scenic views of the Cockburn Range.
We added a half hour to the trip when Mum got bogged in a table drain full of black soil and required a tow by a stockman doing the boundary run with his parents (who incidentally are from Beaudesert).
We washed off the mud when we crossed the Pentacost River and headed back into Kunnunurra via the Gibb River Road.
No comments:
Post a Comment