At 6:30am I remember to turn my mobile phone back on to check for messages, and there is one from the tour company. I called and was told that unfortunately the Gibb River Road is still closed, as well as the Bungle Bungles, so we have to do the trip in reverse, in the hopes that the road will reopen in a few days so we can still do a loop. A big disappointment, but the rains this year were described as “biblical” and there’s been lots of damage to the Gibb River Road.
Our guide picks us up and including Bill and me the tour is full at 21 plus the guide. We have a long day of driving today, and we stop at this massive boab tree. It's estimated to be 1500 years old, and the aborigines use the fruit, bark and even the roots for various things including medicine, food and drink and making twine.
According to our guide, Wayne, certain parts of the Kimberely actually got 7-8 feet of rain in a very short period of time. So no surprise that the bridges and the road are completely washed away in several areas. A couple of weeks ago one tour company decided on their own to drive their vehicles through the flooded areas to higher ground in the Bungle Bungles, but they caused a lot of damage to the road and so they’ve been stuck there ever since. They had to fly the tourists out. This is actually the first week that any trips have been allowed into the Kimberley, and the damage is extensive.
We stopped for lunch at a park, across from an aboriginal art gallery, and bought a hand-etched pod from a boab tree. From there we drove to Geikie Gorge and took a boat down river. Saw lots of fresh water crocs (freshies) but they’re the little guys that only get to about 9 feet long. The local river guide said they won’t hurt you unless you step on them, so no worries. It's the salt water crocs (salties) that you have to worry about, since they can get about twice that size, and are really aggressive. She then said she hadn’t driven a boat in 7 years, and yesterday was her first time driving the boats here. We all thought she was joking until she tried “parking” at the end of the trip. Two boats were hooked together, and she managed to get the first boat docked on her very first try. However, it took her 5 tries to dock the second boat, and it turned out she really had only driven the boat the day before for the very first time. Said she’d been mustering camels for the past 4 years and that they were a lot easier to handle than the boats. The whole area just opened the day before because the flooding was so bad, and the pavilion where we waited for the boat had been completely under water in March.
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| fresh water croc |
Here’s a photo of one of the crossings that is still very much under water, we obviously could not cross here, so drove further down to a bridge crossing and then on to our campsite at Fitzroy Crossing. We opted for the upgrade so got to sleep in a safari type tent with our own loo, quite a step up. Wayne cooked steaks, sausages and kangaroo on the barbie, and then he laid out our options for the coming days. If they open the Bungle Bungles and the Gibb River road we’ll get to do the whole loop, just backwards. But unless the Bungles open up tomorrow, we’ll have to drive past them and continue on to camp somewhere not on the usual itinerary at all, so it will be an adventure for the guide as well as everyone else. If the Bungles are still closed we can take a flight over them, which would include Lake Argyle as well. But the big hope is that the Gibb will reopen in time for us to do the loop, otherwise we miss out on all the waterfalls and gorges, which is what we came for.
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| flooded river crossing |
