6^th July: Kununurra

That wasn't a dodgy 4WD track! Today's was! More on that later!

We all had our adventures today! We were woken early by the noisy departure of the families in 3 large hired Rvs from Queensland who had parked on our door steps. (Gail had to move her car, they were so close!) You can always tell those who haven't done much camping or caravanning before. They don't know the niceties of caravan parks!!

Gail went off on her flight she had booked that took her over Lake Argyle, Bungles & the diamond mine. (It was not a trip we were interested in.) I washed and one of the machines sounds as if it is tumbling large rocks. Not good at 8.00 am on a Sunday morning! But it worked okay! We then went to church at St James Anglican. The priest is Gary Alexander and the service was a relaxed worship with all the necessary elements and a great music group. One played recorder and she made the two little plastic pipes sing! Afterwards we met Maureen Trantor and then her retired priest husband, Ian, from Maryborough. She sees her mission as reaching out to and caring for the Grey Nomads who call in. (We obviously qualified!) She knew the Johnsons and our church as they had been at Kilcoy before Maryborough.

After lunch, we went exploring the Diversion Dam which is very full. This was built first to irrigate. Now water from Lake Argyle is diverted into itto keep it full. We found the park we had stayed in beside the dam where I tied Cherie to the front of the van to keep her safe as she was fearless and loved water. The other two had to stay with her. These days I'd be charged with child cruelty!! We then went to Ivanhoe Crossing over which the water was rushing strongly at a depth of 250 mm. Obviously, some idiots drive across it even though the “Road Closed” barriers are in place as they were broken and a very large rock was in the middle of the road! But people were wading through and the kids were playing there. Not this little black duck! There are “snapping handbags' in there! In fact, we saw one in the lake in front of our park this morning. About 2 metres long, he was sunning himself on a sandbar!

Then we decided to go to a couple of places up a 4WD road which we had not had time to see on Friday. For a while we couldn't understand why it was designated a 4WD only road! We called in to Valentine Springs where we disturbed a young couple in the back of a station wagon. Well named!! 

Then we drove further through some rather large but mostly smooth dips and found the track into Black Rock Falls. I was just asking Glen if he felt we could manage the deep sand and he replied confidently we could, and then we bogged – up to the door sills! Well,we worked for an hour to free ourselves, twisting the jack and finding all the flat stones and tree branches we could to put under the wheels. (Someone had obviously been bogged there before!) I pulled speargrass (ouch!!) to lay on the track and Glen let the tyres down even further than they were already. I pushed and we finally got out! Glen had gunned it so hard in 4WD that I nearly fell flat on my face in the red sand. He turned around and scrub dashed to avoid all the 30 cm deep sand – there were alternative tracks all over the place, all with deep sand! We had sung a kids' song in church “God is everywhere!” and I was praying that He was there with us then because nobody else came past and we were 50 kms out in the bush with no-one knowing where we were! Long walk home! I'm just regreting that I didn't think to take a photo!

We pumped the tyres up again (electric pump run off the car!) and we came home, gritty with red sand! First thing we did was have a hot shower. We never did see Black Rock Falls! Glen will have to buy another jack as we are driving into the Bungles in a few days time!

Oh well! Another story to tell!