"We are not completely normal" pt. 4

From Home Valley Station we had just one more stop along the actual Gibb River Road and, much like the first two stops (Windjana Gorge and Bell Gorge), it was located pretty darned close to an actual town: Kununurra. As such, there were a LOT more people there. It's the fast and easy way to say you've seen the Gibb - just visit the places within a few hours of either Kununurra ("kun-uh-NAR-uh") or Derby and save your car's suspension the k's and k's of rugged dirt roads. As the last few weeks had shown us by that point, we didn't have that much sense. 

There was a definite sense of sadness that a good thing was ending as we left Home Valley to carry on to El Questro station; the dirt roads ended and went back to pavement. After weeks of loud driving it was almost eerie to drive nearly silently again, along smooth, tidy roads. To carry on conversation without yelling, to have belongings stay put rather than rattle about and fall to the car floor, to be able to open the car windows without concern about the car in front's dust cloud; changes were afoot, and it felt like the beginning of the end. Thankfully, though, El Questro made us work a little bit to get there. We arrived late in the morning and had to do two creek crossings to get onto the property. The first was a quick and easy one, but the second one made me a little bit nervous about Tessie: it was probably the deepest crossing we'd yet encountered and I was happy when her nose started going up the bank on the far side! If her entrance was made to feel rugged with the water crossings, El Questro was a feast of sanitized Gibb for the senses. Tessie had barely stopped dripping water from her sides when we pulled up next to a neatly manicured pasture with a sprinkler system going at full tilt. Sleek horses and miniature donkeys roamed about, and shiny 4WD cars were parked around a full lot. Gone were the dust-coated vehicles of the Gibb - here be city-slickers! If Home Valley had felt like an oasis in the desert, El Questro was a bit like Disneyland: very corporate looking staff uniforms (though made by a country-folk approved luxe brand), an artist-in-residence, posters advertising day tours scattered around the beer garden and food canteen. Don't get me wrong: it was beautiful. And the staff (much like at Disney) was wonderfully friendly. But it was surely a different kind of Gibb than the one we'd been traveling for the last weeks. 

We'd been in casual discussions for the last few days about how we might spend our time at El Questro. I'd been pretty clear that I wanted to do a full day of horseback riding and didn't mind going it solo if no one else was inclined. Some of the others really wanted to do a helicopter tour when we got to the Bungle Bungles and weren't sure if they would want to do both, but when I asked about it at check-in, everyone rallied and said they were on board. So we booked in for the next morning! In high spirits, we made our way down to our campsite for the evening on the banks of the Pentecost River. Some napped, some fished, some just lazed about, but we all soaked up the quiet of our private campsite, Harrier, and enjoyed the beautiful afternoon in the breeze. Though we still had a few days of food provisions left in our cars, none of us had missed the smell of burgers and fries wafting through the reception area. Votes were taken and we all piled into cars to go back to the homestead for dinner. We'd seen signs indicating that it was open mic night, and cold tap beer and a burger was a siren's call. We didn't have a shower at our private site, so we thought we'd kill two birds with one stone and shower while we were back that way as well. It was so. much. fun. Beer and burgers turned into a whole evening out enjoying the live music and the incredibly talented staff who did most of the open mic singing. 

Gaia at least had some leg room on the way back to the homestead

In the El Questro beer garden

Satisfying though it was, we didn't stick around too too terribly late: we had an early morning date with some horses after all! So back to the site to drift off to sleep with the sounds of the Pentecost River in our ears. 

By this point in the road trip, Gaia and I had our morning routine pretty well set. Whoever was out of their swag first would boil the kettle for morning tea and maybe, if we had some avocados, make toast for breaky. Most of the time Gaia was up first (many of you will be familiar with my 2-hours-until-I'm-awake timeline in the morning), but we were riding horses on Saturday! So I was up early, full of excitement, and got to capture these rare images of a just-awakened Gaia. Truly art.

She didn't think it was as glorious a day as I did... yet. 

Trying to get motivated to stick her arm out for the tea I left next to her shoes

The morning rolled pretty quickly from there. We had to change campsites that night because of booking limitations, so we packed up camp and made our way to the horse paddock to meet Gwen, the head horsewoman, and Ellie, our other guide for the day. We didn't find out til we got there, but we were the only ones signed up and basically had a private tour! The plan was to ride through the station property to Zebedee Springs, a series of thermal pools in the station, where we'd stop for lunch. Then slowly we made our way back. All told, it was about 6 hours on horseback with really lovely staff to chat and laugh with all day long. Rob Roy, my trusty steed, proved to be lots of fun to ride. He didn't care much for plodding along at a walking pace, but he loved to trot and canter - so good!

GRC with a massive boab in El Questro

One of the perks of doing the tour we chose was the lunch stop at Zebedee Springs. It's one of the big attractions of El Questro, and they make it feel exclusive by closing the springs for a few hours every day so that they're only open to folks on tours. They time it such that each tour group has the springs to themselves for a tiny bit, and because our tour was rather inadvertently a private one, the GRC had it all to ourselves for about 25 minutes! After a morning's ride through the scrub brush, it was so refreshing to hop into some thermal springs and just soak. 

Because no Aussie lunch is complete without a beer, I guess

After a beautiful day spent riding, soaking, and laughing, we headed back to the homestead. In thanks, we invited Gwen to come round the beer garden so we could buy her a drink or two. Her partner, John, had delivered our lunch to us at Zebedee, so we invited him along too! Such a great idea: the two of them were hilarious and kind and entertaining, even after spending the day hard at work making sure WE were having a good time. And so another evening was spent in the beer garden at El Questro, full of joy and high spirits. 

Next morning we really wanted to get out and see more of the station, so we went on a long walk through El Questro Gorge. It was a hot day but the whole gorge was filled with Livistona palms, making it feel like a tropical paradise, and the creek running through the gorge held enough little pools to cool off in that we barely had to break a sweat. Sheer walls covered in giant ferns, dripping roots from fig trees atop the gorge, and a thick cushion of roots from the Livistona palms made for a green, lush wonderland. The gorge walk itself was pretty straight forward up to the halfway point, where there was a beautiful swimming hole created by a giant boulder that blocked the full width of the gorge (a narrow point, to be sure, but still). From there, we had to climb over the boulder, no mean feat, to continue the walk. I wasn't sure we were coordinated enough to manage it (read: that I was coordinated enough to manage it), but we persevered! And man, the waterfall at the end of the gorge, tumbling into MacMicking Pool, was truly one of the most beautiful I've ever seen.

MacMicking Pool

El Questro Gorge

Entering El Questro Gorge

Poor Oceane is afraid of heights. Bless her cotton socks (*one of my favorite Aussie-isms*), she persevered despite some really hectic stretches of hike. On the return trek, she asked me to take this photo of her and Jess so she could show her brother how she had to navigate slippery, moss-covered rocks to continue on - and she did!

Can you see Oceane and Jess just by the plant line?

On the walk back we also encountered this fellow and were very unsure of how scared we were supposed to be... this is, after all, the land of the King Brown snake and Death Adder:

We gave him a wide berth, just in case

It was a long, hot day, filled with beauty, and I nearly lost one of my hiking shoes when we had to slog thigh-deep through some marsh to get back to our cars. Magic.

We headed up to a pretty look out for the sunset and soaked up the last of the day's light, contented. 

Our last morning in El Questro dawned full of promise and plans. We had a smaller drive day to get us to the free camp site we planned outside Kununurra, but we wanted to hike Emma Gorge on the way out. It's an easy walk, especially compared to our efforts from the previous day, but it ends in this deep ravine with a pool that just makes you believe in magical places. After having MacMicking Pool all to ourselves the day before, and Zebedee Springs the day before that, it felt a little crowded to have other folks around while we swam, but it was still so worth it.

On the way back to the car, I hiked ahead to have some me-time. We resigned ourselves to being back on paved roads, so the tires had to be re-inflated after the last few weeks of running on low pressure over the corrugations. We left Emma Gorge and had one final stop to make along our Gibb River Road journey: the driving conditions sign that signified the end of the road. 

Just after the sign was one final little swimming hole called The Grotto. It's a snaky little trek down into a pit, but the fresh, cool water, warm rocks to bask on, and two rope swings made it a great place to unwind a bit. We shared it with a few families with kids who were excited to have some Big Kids to do the rope swings with them. 

Handy little staircase cut into the rock

The Grotto was the last little bit of Gibb River Road magic, but we still had much to do and see, plenty of it filled with wonder. But that afternoon, it was hard to see, despite the day's beauty. That afternoon, I just wanted to float in solitude in quiet pools, but that wasn't in the cards. So the loud sounds of my air compressor, and of happy screaming children, and of my tires driving down paved roads once more brought me back to reality, and the drive to our campsite at Button's Crossing, paved roads and all, felt like a let-down. You can't be happy every day of a 5 week road trip, I guess, or I can't anyway, and leaving the Gibb behind put me in a funk. It wasn't helped by the fact that Gaia and I ran over a snake that afternoon. It was stretched across the width of the road, so there was no chance to swerve and avoid it, but I was pretty devastated. The worst part was that it didn't die right away. We didn't know if it was poisonous or not, but I didn't want to leave the poor thing to suffer so we carried it off the road with a (very long) stick, and then killed it with a rock. From starting the day off so well, it was going remarkably downhill. We got to Button's Crossing and I picked fights with everyone over the camp site, over dinner, over where to set up our swags. I really wasn't at my very best. But thank goodness for friends who know me well enough to just ignore me completely when necessary, and leave me to my own grumpy devices. At least until dinner, when they introduced me to condensed milk in a tube, and reminded me that joy can be found in other places than remote bush treks - sometimes it's found in supermarket aisle 5. 

To reach Kununurra the next morning, we took a shortcut: a water crossing over the Ord River called Ivanhoe Crossing. It's a paved "road," but you need a high clearance vehicle to do it. Our cars were definitely up to the task, and we had so much fun that we did it four more times! Part of the reason for this enthusiasm was a guy with a drone who asked us to drive it again so he could shoot some video of us doing the crossing! So cool. 

Friendly reminder to respect the locals

Ivanhoe Crossing

We popped into Black Rock Falls that morning, as well, but the dry season was well under way and there wasn't much in the way of falling water. What there were, however, was heaps of butterflies!

On the way into Kununurra, Gaia and I pulled into a little service station to get some more fuel. We were nearly running on fumes at that point, and the cheapest spot was a little way out of town. Tessie was filthy and covered with classy little bits of poetry on her windows, mostly courtesy of Mia, and the guy who was filling us up with fuel couldn't help but notice. He was a mild guy, with a very dry sense of humor. When we asked how his day was going he said "happy as a clam at high tide." During our chats (we had to get a lot of fuel, so we had time), he suggested that we might, perhaps, want to wash Tessie off a bit. That if we were his daughters, he wouldn't want us driving around looking like hobos, and that, if we pinky promised not to tell anyone, we could use the truck wash station around the back. We were thrilled. So he got us set up with the pressure washing hoses and let us go to town. It's funny how God sends us angels when we need them; after the previous day's highs and lows, he was just the sort of person we needed to meet. 

After Ivanhoe and fueling up, we were ready for some food. Hanger wasn't our friend on the trip, so we were all happy to avoid it. The evening that we spent hanging out with Gwen she had turned us onto Ord River Rum, made by a distillery in Kununurra. They did tastings and served lunch, and the lady at the visitors center said they had the best tacos in town. That was all we needed: away we went!

Some good rum and good food was what we really needed, and then on we went, headed towards Kununurra and Lake Argyle. This was supposed to be the last post but here we are.... not on the last GRC post. 'Til next time!