Lake Argyle

 Sun 13^th July  Saddle Creek

The 70km odd drive from Kununurra to Lake Argyle was very interesting. The boabs were still plentiful and many of them had huge trunks. The turnoff to Argyle was the beginning of spectacular colourful ridges and cliffs, with a huge array of shapes ranging from small crumbly looking layers to huge rounded boulders and flat sided shiny stone walls. No two were exactly the same colour. You could see the layers in the rocks going in all directions. There were huge crevasses in some rock faces and other ones that had ground cover. A lot of them had trees on top and around their bottom reaches. The dammed area used to be part of Durack Station. Once there, we had to unhook our vans to do the 4½ km drive to the dam wall and to various lookouts.  The roads up to the lookouts were extremely steep. There is a huge amount of water in the dam and the old peaks of ranges are dotted throughout as islands. It is very picturesque with the deep blue of the water and the multihued walls of the edges. The power of the water coming through the one gate that was open was enormous. At the end of the drive is a lovely picnic area abundant in shady trees, many of them in flower. The fence runs parallel with the river, so the view of the spillway, the dam wall and the river below is really good.

On the way out of Argyle we suddenly realised that George wasn’t following us so we stopped and waited for a few minutes. We decided that something must be wrong so we continued along until we could find somewhere to turn around and go back. A few km back we found them on the side of the road changing a flat tyre on the caravan. The entire tyre and rim had been destroyed and there were big black marks on the road showing where George had had to go to find a safe stopping place on the quite narrow road. Not unexpectedly we left Argyle diamondless.

Once the tyre was replaced we continued out on the highway towards Timber Creek. We were stopped at some roadworks for a few minutes and chatted to the Aboriginal who was doing the traffic control. He works for Highway Traffic Kimberly and said the majority of the crew were Indigenous.  He wasn’t meant to be at work until tomorrow, but got called in because all the other workers were still drunk from the Kununurra show. We stopped at Saddle Creek rest area for the night and George spent quite a bit of time (with advice from various other people camped there) trying to hook up his satellite dish so that Jan could watch the Collingwood/Essendon game. Despite all the good advice he couldn’t get a signal, in fact he could barely find north, so he gave up and Jan listened to Peter Cardamone calling the game on radio.

We had dinner in the shelter and Mick lit a fire – not that we needed the heat. It was a hot day and very warm evening. Several people came and joined us and we had a very pleasant evening. One of the couples was from NZ and they are here doing voluntary work. They had just come from Halls Creek where they were part of a group doing maintenance on an Indigenous community. They are headed to Limbunya, a really remote area on the Tanami. They spent 7 months in Australia last year and will be here for 9 months this year before returning to their home in Nelson.

Mon 14^th July  Vince Connoly Crossing at Limestone Creek.

After about 120km we arrived in Timber Creek where we had been told we could get a shower. If you are ever there, you go to the shire office on the west end of town. On the end of it is a recreation centre with clean, free toilets and hot showers. Not only that, but there is a kitchen with a boiling urn and chilled water.

We stopped for lunch at Victoria River Crossing, near the roadhouse. There was a nice grassy spot and we watched three truckloads of horses pull up. They were taken out of the trucks and led into a paddock near the roadhouse and walked around while the trucks were mucked out. They were then given a drink and reloaded into the trucks. There were more than a dozen horses and they looked like they might have been young race horses and were perhaps headed for sale or a big meeting or something. Later when on the road we saw more truckloads of horses.

We finished our journey 50 odd km from Katherine where we found a good level spot, got organised and then sat in the shaded shelter. Another couple joined us and he and I ended up playing our ukuleles for a while. His masterpiece was Charleston, but he didn’t know much else so we sang and played a bit and talked a lot.  It was very hot and got even hotter at sunset when the breeze stopped altogether. It was more pleasant outside than in the van.