The Way Home
After catching up on some school work and soaking in the thermal springs for a few days in Katherine, we headed off towards WA where we called into a campsite on the NT side of Lake Argyle. The owners had bought a mining lease for Zebra Rocks, which is a striped rock found only in the Kimberley. As a side venture the owners Ruth & Kim have opened up a camp ground and operate mine tours, as well as boat cruises on lake Argyle.
The kids were able to fossick in the dry creek beds for the Zebra stones and then they spent hours polishing them with sand paper and water to smooth them out and bring up the stripes. Lucie also set up a dog sitting service which kept her busy for a few hours.
We had a great surprise bumping into David and Ros, our Brisbane rellies. We’d spent time with them in Katherine and it was lovely to cross paths again. We did the sunset tour of Lake Argyle and it was made all the more magical by sharing it with them. No shortage of champagne, freshwater crocs and birdlife, we spent four hours on the Lake which was a pretty spectacular experience for our last night in the NT.
Kids loved sitting up the front of the 4wd truck in the dark on the way home spotting cane toads for the driver to line up…love no rules NT!
After crossing the border into WA, we spent a few days in Kununurra restocking and gearing ourselves up for the Gibb River Road trip. Armageddon shopping trips, alcohol stockpiling which is a funny story in itself- due to local restrictions there is a limit on how much you can buy. We felt like we were doing the walk of shame every afternoon, slinking back to the campground with our daily stash!
Kununurra was a favourite stay for all of us as we met some really lovely couples and families in the park there. The kids all hooked up with buddies and Sean and I were able to spend time with some families who were also crazy enough to pull their kids out of school and drag them around the countryside. We all ended up spending a couple of extra days here to give the kids (and ourselves) time here to connect with people outside the 5 of us.
Kununurra also happened to be right on the Lake and the caravan park had a resident toothless Freshwater croc who the ranger came to feed. He very kindly/stupidly showed the kids how to shake a plastic bag to draw the croc up to the shore and then feed it chicken. Of course after a day or so, they were all budding little Alby Mangels and of course this took over from polishing Zebra Rocks as their favourite thing to do…
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