Scenic flight & El Questro Thursday 28/7/11

Up early for a flight, as we depart Kununurra , we fly over the Ord River Irrigation Area, Argyle Spillway & Top Dam as well as the Main Dam Wall and the Ord Hydropower station which provides power to Kununurra & Wyndham region. The flight continues over Lake Argyle and over Zebra Rock Peninsula which holds the world's only known deposits of the unique rock. It is a fine grain sandstone with rhythmic pattern of reddish stripes or spots against a white background.

Our flight continued over Lissadelle andTexas Downs Cattle stations which are separated by the boundary of Bow River. The pastoral leases are huge in the Kimberley, averaging 250000 hectares but the stocking rate is low with 2-3 cattle/km2 or 8 beasts/km2 on river frontage.

We have 20 minutes over The Bungle Bungles where we see the beehive shaped domes. These sandstone towers were formed over millions of years from sandstone and conglomerate from weathering by wind, rain and flowing water. The domes have formed case hardened skins which have a striped appearance, with layers of orange and dark grey resembling tiger skin. The grey bands are formed by Cyanobacteria - a single celled organism.

The Cyanobacterial grow on layers of sandstone where moisture accumulates. The orange bands are oxidised iron compounds that have dried out too quickly for the Cyanobacteria to grow.

Our flight over the Bungles came to an end as we meandered along Piccaninny Gorge & Creek & we saw the site where QANTAS filmed "I still call Australia Home" ad.

We return back over Rio Tinto's Argyle Diamond Mine which is the world's largest diamond mine, producing between 1/4 and 1/5 of the world's diamonds, equating to an average of 20 million carats of diamonds per year This mine is known for it's coloured diamonds, especially the intense pink diamonds - it's signature stone.

We arrive back in Kununurra after 2 hours & following a hearty Aussie brekkie we head out to El Expenso (oops I mean El Questro). Our first stop is Zebedee Springs for a foot splash in warm water before the paying guests arrive and the rangers get their whips out.

A look around El Questro Wilderness park has us proceeding to Emma Gorge. This is one of the Kimberley region's most well known and spectacular gorges. We enjoyed the walk & also the invigorating thermal trickle of water into a small pool which then plunges into a huge waterhole with a droplet waterfall enclosed on 3 sides by 65m sheer cliffs. We all brave the water with the older and more sensible sticking to the warmer areas. Angus however makes the most of this beautiful body of water and proceeds to do his icecube impression followed reluctantly by his more sensible sister. We then head back to Kununurra weary but happy.