Saturday 25th November – East across WA and Geiki Gorge

An early awakening by the sun this morning, getting us up and on the road for just past 8am.

Sun rise in Broome

We needed to make as much progress as possible east today, nearing the edge of WA.  But I was also keen to not forget our parks pass that was only valid for this state!  There were a couple of NPs along our route that would not consist of much of a detour but would hopefully be worth a visit.  The first one was near Fitzroy crossing, Geiki gorge.  The negative thing was that the drive from Broome had taken longer than expected so we arrived at the gorge just after lunch, i.e. the hottest part of the day. The park was mostly shut down.  They do boating tours of the gorge, but these stopped in October.  No one is crazy enough to visit at this time of year…  Apart from us!  A quick perusal of the information boards identified a reasonably short walk for us along the river to a sandbar and back estimated to take about 30 minutes.  We got kitted out – hats, fly nets, sunscreen, water, walking shoes – and set off.  There were some roos bouncing around in the undergrowth and we kept an eye out into the water for crocs but we didn’t see any.  A short slope down to the sandbar gave us a view along the river to the gorge face where we could see the clear floodwater line where the limestone is polished by the high waters in wet season.   

View along the river with the high water line on the limestone rocks ahead

The locals know to stick to the shade....

We were in direct sunlight.  A clear example of how only slight exertion in today’s extreme heat could make it feel like we’d just climbed a mountain!  Never mind half an hour, we were back at the van in 20 minutes.  Completely soaked through with sweat and exhausted!  We hit the road again.  Air con on full blast.  Maybe we’ll only stop at parks if the conditions are more favourable…  AND we didn’t even get asked to show our pass!

Carrying on eastwards I was a bit of a hard taskmaster today.  Simon was all for pulling up stumps about 4pm but I was adamant that we should keep going until nearer dusk.  Cutting the drive two hours short today would mean two hours further to cover tomorrow if we wanted to get to see everywhere we wanted to before reaching Darwin.  As this as my idea, I took responsibility for the drive.  What I’d forgotten was that, as we progressed eastwards, sunset would get ever-earlier.  This was made worse today by dark clouds ridding the sky of light even earlier.  We had set our sights on a free rest area for the night one hour north of Hall Creek.  Filling up with petrol yet again there, it was then a race against the impending darkness.

It's not quite dark.... yet.

I’d mentioned our avoidance of night-driving due to animals on the road.  Well, it had been bad enough in daylight!  Simon had managed some skilled braking a day or so ago to avoid taking out a suicidal roo, whilst we’d both had to keep alert for cattle regularly straying on the highway.  I had taken to hooting the horn in advance of any animals I could see in the distance, especially important to give the hawks feeding on the road-kill early warning.  I’d made the mistake today of commenting that maybe I should hit something because then at least the hawks would have breakfast.  Sadly, having avoided all the big stuff, I ended up bouncing a rock pigeon (ones with a fancy Mohican hair-do), off the windscreen.  I felt awful. Simon reckoned that it was merely concussed.  Seeing a cloud of feathers bouncing on the verge in a side mirror, I was unconvinced.  

As the light faded during my evening drive I had to admit defeat and turn the lights on full.  I dropped my speed and watched the verges for any flicker of movement, regularly tooting my horn to deter any nearby animal.  Then it started raining.  As the highway turned shiny and river-like the massive local population of frogs and toads became confused and decided to turn my early evening drive into a game of ‘frogger’.  Slowing to a suitable ‘swerve-speed’ I did my very best to avoid every single bump or lump I could make out in my full beams.  The last fifteen minutes of the drive were painfully slow but thankfully we made it to our free spot and for the second time this week we had it completely to ourselves.  The rain had done us a massive favour in cooling the air and getting rid of the airborne critters for a while.  I was exhausted, so after a quick throw-together dinner we settled in for the night, even risking having the boot open as we were so isolated from the rest of the world.