Moving On

Broome to Darwin

Moving on from Broome with a feeling that the town is a nice place but it is very overrated with all the tourist advertising and very expensive for the average Aussie traveller. We decided to head to Derby today which is against all information from fellow nomads but we have to find out for ourselves and to our surprise it was a great little spot with a comfortable c/van park and a nice pool which we used twice,(but more midges than Hervey Bay) Derby has the biggest tides in the country of over 11m and you can drive out on the wharf area in a full circle to fish or watch the tides.

I probably could have picked up a job here because when I put the car in to the local Tyrepower for a wheel rotation the chap said that his young fella had gone home for lunch and not returned but I didn’t like the place THAT much, we stayed 2 nights but before leaving I had to have a jog on the walking track out to the wharf which was about 2k long and while jogging I caught up with a dark chap (Kiwi) who was working in the hospital as a nurse and jogged most mornings, he was a very pleasant chap and we managed to cover about 6k while having a good chat.

We left Derby with a good feeling and more sunset photos and proceeded to “Fitzroy Crossing” and found a c/van park where we could have stayed a lot longer but for the cost, it had a beautiful setting on the river with grassed sites and cement roads. We only stayed one night but fellow travellers said that we must do the Geikie Gorge boat tour before we leave so because the price was right we were up early and prepared the van to leave so we could still be out by 10am after returning from the tour, it was not as spectacular as we were led to believe but still worth it and we saw some fresh water crocs, the tour barges were like b/doubles as they could add another barge(up to three) depending on the number of people, after our tour we moved on towards Turkey Creek (Warman) but we pulled in to a free camp at Mary Pool for a night which was very popular with about 25 other campers there and we got a good photo of a water monitor, some birds and animal life, and there are not many places that we stop where don’t we meet people from Hervey bay or around the area (3 in the camp). The entertainment on arriving was watching a couple trying to get TV with their satellite dish, with lots of yelling and door slamming we wonder if some people ever leave home.

We left Mary pool reasonably early after a comfortable night and proceeded on to Turkey Creek where we booked into the park and settled down for an early night because we had booked a 1 day tour to the “Bungle Bungles” and it was a 5.30am start. We managed to be on time for our tour guide for the day and there were only 3 other people so we had a good repo ire with him, the day was great and the Bungles were excellent but a very long day arriving back at 7pm, I was very happy that we did not take our vehicle because the wear & tear, cost of fuel and the possibility of doing a tyre far outweighed the cost of the tour. The main attraction at Turkey Creek was for every indigenous person there seemed to be three dogs so I didn’t bother going for a jog.

From here we made our way to “Kununurra” and trying to get as far as we could on our fuel because the roadhouses were over $2 litre, we called into Wyndham on the way but it did not appeal to us so had some lunch there, took a couple of photos then went on to Kununurra, we booked into the Hidden Valley C/van park because it was a good price and pensioner discounts (even though we had been told it wasn’t a very nice park) we enjoyed it and there was a beautiful outlook with a rocky outcrop known as the mini bungles surrounding the park that we did a walk through and I ran around before leaving. (We have found that advice you receive is great but it pays to see for yourself because there are sooo many different opinions regarding accommodation and sights and prices are not always a good indication of quality) Click Here For Photos

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