Gibb River Road & Kununurra 2019

We drove the Gibb River Road west to east, starting in Broome and finishing in Kununurra.

After two preceding foggy mornings, on the day of our departure from Broome we woke up to a beautiful sunny morning. We saw a few brolgas on the side of the road out of Broome.

We drove towards Fitzroy Crossing before turning left off the tarmac towards Tunnel Creek, which was our first destination on / just off the Gibb. It’s a place where allegedly Jandamara, an Aboriginal police officer turned freedom fighter, hid from police before being eventually killed at Windjana Gorge. It’s a system of caves and you have to walk through some muddy puddles to get to the other end which didn’t make me feel very comfortable since I knew there were fresh water crocodiles there. There was also a tree full of flying foxes (aka fruit bats).

From there we drove another 20km or so to camp at Windjana Gorge – first proper camping on the Gibb. The camping site was ok, with unexpected flushing toilets and warm showers! We had a quick look at the freshies that evening but we only did the proper whole-length walk the next day. The river bed was dry with some puddles every here and there where freshies were sunbathing. The end of the walk was somewhat abrupt to a simple sign “end of walking trail” rather than a physical end.

We got much better views of the Windjana Gorge residents next morning.

From Windjana Gorge we drove to Silent Grove to camp for the night and see nearby Bell Gorge. It was not a good day… first of all our friends’ car had a flat as we arrived at Silent Grove.

The walk to Bell Gorge was quite nice but unfortunately I decided to have a dip in the water… what I didn’t realize was how slippery the algae-covered rocks were so I went in much faster and deeper than I expected!

On the way back to Silent Grove (on horrendous corrugations) Emma also had a flat, so we deflated the tyres to even lower pressures.

That night we had a nice surprise at the camping grounds as they screened some short films made by local people which were quite nice.

Day 3 we drove from Silent Grove to Adcock Gorge first. The road off Gibb was not too bad initially but the last kilometer or so was really rocky and rough so we decided to walk that last bit. The walk was quite nice, past a lily pond. The gorge itself is quite small and the water was quite green / not inviting for a swim. That’s where we first met the red dog, with a young couple from Margaret River who were taking their time to get to Gold Coast.

From Adcock Gorge we went to Galvans Gorge which was quite close to the main road. On the way we stopped at Imintji community store (got some Diesel, ice creams, no tyres fixed, watched some Aboriginal women dot painting and two camp dogs catching ants), then at Over the range tyre shop to have the tyres fixed – 500 dollars a tyre, which was probably reasonable considering the location and lack of competition!

We finished the day driving to Mt Barnett station where we camped for the night. It was nice to see the cows going back home past the gate / station. The camping grounds themselves were ok, just very busy and with not very good ablution facilities (cold water, only 2 showers…).

In the morning we went to Manning Gorge. The walk starts off Mt Barnett camping grounds. There is a dinghy to go across a river crossing right at the start, but there was a queue of old people so we ended up walking around it… for quite a while and in quite tall bush. Luckily no snakes! The gorge itself was really nice, probably the best of the whole trip. And it was full of fish very keen to have some bread crumbs.

From Mt Barnett we drove to Drysdale River station planning to go to Mitchell plateau the next day. The camping grounds at Drysdale were very, very dry and dusty. But the facilities were good, clean and had enough hot water for all campers. We got very closed to being talked into catching a flight + helicopter instead of driving as the hosts told us that the road was badly corrugated. But lucky we didn’t as the drive was probably much nicer than if we had flown! The kitchen staff at Drysdale cooked a really nice dinner and we were joined by Roger, the blue-winged kookaburra for the meal.

In the morning we took off towards Mitchell Plateau. First we stopped at two sites of Aboriginal rock painting – where we saw Bradshaw figures (aka Gwion – the long, slender black figures) and Wandjina paintings – the extraterrestrial looking faces with no mouths).

The drive was interesting from many points of view. The landscape kept changing quite a bit and included patches of rainforest, shrubs, grassland and Livistona palms. The road was ok in parts but about 40 km were just really, really bad corrugations where we only did about 40 kph and didn’t think we would escape without major car damage! Camping there was really nice as we had the camping grounds to ourselves. At nighttime it was slightly eerie as dingoes were howling.

In the morning we took off quite early to walk to the Mitchell falls. We walked to the front of the falls and had the best lunch spot ever overwatching them.

Once back to the campsite we even had the energy to do the river lookout walk to see the sunset.

From Mitchell Falls campground we drove back past Drysdale and kept going to Ellenbrae (where we stopped for scones) and then our final destination for the day, Home At Ellenbrae there were lots of double-barred finches there and also a cute cuddly dog (on a diet)!

As we approached Home Valley Station we came across the famous top-of-the-hill view towards the Pentecost River and the Cockburn Range, which was still an awe moment even though we were expecting it.

Home Valley station was quite nice – well-maintained grounds, clean facilities, excellent food for dinner.  It was definitely a memorable evening as we also watched Simona Halep beat Serena Williams in the the Wimbledon women’s final.

After sleeping in and a yummy breakfast we took off towards El Questro, only 51 km away. We were somewhat unpleasantly surprised to see the Pentecost River crossing dry… so decided to skip going to Wyndham as we weren’t sure how impressive the 5-river lookout would be with so little water. El Questro was the most expensive camping place of all, but again well maintained, although with far from enough ablution blocks considering the number of tourists. We wanted to walk to El Questro gorge but there were signs warning about death adders in the gorge / on the walk so we decided against it and went only to Emma Gorge.

And this was the end of our Gibb River Road adventure!

Here is a short video as well

We left El Questro reasonably early for Kununurra and got there around 11 am. We stayed at Kimberleyland Waterfront Holiday park which was just beautiful – right on the lake shore, with lots of birds around. Apparently they had a regularly visiting fresh water crocodile as well, but we didn’t see it during our stay.

Next day we went on a cruise. We were initially supposed to stay in Lake Argyle caravan park but we wanted to leave earlier so changed everything… at no cost and with no problems from their staff, a really nice interaction / experience. So we got picked up from the caravan park at 8 am, went on a bus to Lake Argyle resort (nice old Aussie driver who explained lots of things on the way about the local history, flora – leafy boabs means they have water, as they can only get rid of water through leaves; soils – sandstone that was black in some spots due to cyanobacteria who like it cooler and moist, red in other parts from the iron oxide which stops some of the erosion). After a short stop at Durrack homestead display and another one at Lake Argyle resort to admire the infinity pool again we got onto the Lake Argyle cruise where we had another very knowledgeable guide. We stopped for lunch on an island and there was also the option to go for a swim but it was pretty cold.

After coming back we jumped onto an Ord River cruise boat on lake Kununurra that was also very interesting, and we had a magical sunset. We fed some more fish here as well.

Back in Kununurra we went to the Pumphouse for dinner (yummy as always) before getting ready for the long trip back home.

We got up really early and had our last breakfast in Kununurra at Wild Mango café before leaving around 8:30 am.

We stopped at Warmun on the way to admire the beautiful but ridiculously priced artwork

and also Halls Creek (to see the China Wall… not the wisest idea, 7 km of badly corrugated road away) before arriving into Fitzroy Crossing around 5 pm.

We stayed at Fitzroy River Lodge where there were lots of locals enjoying a drink; packs of wallabies hopping around; tourists off one of the APT Wild Kimberley tours wearing wet shoes – probably after a stop at Tunnel Creek. We had some local food (deep fried crocodile, chicken parma, kangaroo grill) before going to bed early and be ready for a long day.

On Thursday we got up at 4:30 am at left just before 5 am. The sunrise was just spectacular.