18 July 2016 - Day 107 - Pardoo Station

We said goodbye to Alan, Sophie and the girls and drove another few hundred kilometers to Pardoo Station.

Pardoo Station is a working cattle station that has a caravan park at the back of it.  We had been looking to stay at a station stay for sometime.

When we arrived there were 100's of head of cattle in holding pens waiting to be loaded onto a truck for transportation in the morning.

The boys got to feed the cattle thru the fence and we watch them sort them out into groups as to who was staying or going.

When they did the muster a few weeks earlier 4 baby calves had been seperated from their mothers so they were in a different pen and had to be hand fed.  The boys loved this and fed them in the afternoon and the morning before we left.

We were also lucky enough to watch the farmers load all the cattle onto the truck in the morning.

 The boys are becoming professionals at opening and closing gates.

We had a great time at Pardoo and could have stayed longer.

16 - 17 July 2016 - Days 105 - 106 - Barn Hill

We left Derby and had arranged to meet our friends from Noosa Alan, Sophie, Scarlet and Arwin.  The last time that we had seen them was way back in Tennant Creek.

We arrived at Barn Hill and it was windy but still hot.  We were getting worried that the temperature may start to drop from here on down but it was still nice.

Alan and Sophie arrived and we had a nice afternoon catching up and the kids went down to the beach and explored.  They had a great time and came back with a plan that they would spend the whole day down there tomorrow and pack their bags with their lunch.

The next day was the sunday markets in the camp ground and Michael had heard that Barn Hill has there own dice game called left, right and centre.  We bought the dice game and learnt how to play it. The kids had a few practice rounds and then that night we all sat up and played it and had a great time.

That day we visited Eco Beach which we were told was Echo Beach from the song, apparently it's not.  We had lunch and the kids had a swim and then they lay around in the hammocks.

15 July 2016 - Day 104 - Derby

We packed up early and headed for Derby to collect the next terms school work before the post office shut for the weekend.

On the way along The Gibb Mitch lost his first tooth.  It was sticking up in the air and he couldn't talk properly, he kept saying "this tooth has to come out today".  It was very exciting and funny and the tooth fairy found him in Derby that night and gave him $5.00.

After arriving back to the caravan we unpacked the car and caught up on the 4 loads of washing that needed to be done.

Once that was all done we took the kids to the local swimming pool where they were having a fun day.  The kids enjoyed it.

Then we did the food shopping ready for the next adventure.  Starting our decent down the west coast.

13 - 14 July 2016 - Days 102 - 103 - Silent Grove Gibb River Road

We had all intentions of leaving early but by the time we went and send goodbye to everyone we didn't leave Honeymoon Bay until 9am.  Then we quickly stopped in at the community supermarket to stock up on some food and the deck hand from the fishing trip the day before had a flat tyre.  By the time we talked to him, to make sure he was ok.  We didn't leave Kalumburu until well after 10am.

The drive back to Drysdale was great as again the grader had just gone along that stretch of road and it took at least an hour off the trip.  We stopped and got some petrol and continued onto Mt Barnett Station for another tank of petrol.

By the time we arrived at Silent Grove it was 5pm and the sun was going down and we had travelled approx. 560 klms on bad roads.  It had rained alot during the night around Mt Barnett station and the road was down to bare rock with no dirt covering it at all, which exposed sharp rocks.

After a super quick set up of camp, we did it in record time and cooked dinner and were sitting around the fire by 6.30pm.  We were all shattered.

The next morning we woke up and hung around the camp and relaxed before we did the Bell Gorge walk.  It only took around 30 minutes to get into the gorge.  The boys all had a swim and again found something to jump off.

We had to walk thru the water on the way out, so Cooper carried Mitch thru like a nice brother as he

already had his shoes on.

The car was so dirty from the drive in the day before that we went down to the water crossing that we had crossed on the way into Silent Grove and gave the car a wash.

It was another great day.

10 - 12 July 2016 - Days 99 - 101 - Kalumburu Gibb River Road

We got up early and had Kalumburu in our sites.

On the way we stopped in at King Edward River and had a swim in a little Waterfall which was great.  

The drive into Kalumburu was good with the grader just going thru one section of the trip.  As we were driving along approx. 30 kms out from the community of Kalumburu we noticed a land cruiser on the side of the road with a flat tyre.  Michael said "I bet we are going to see some people walking along the road".  Sure enough about 1 kilometer down the road we see 3 lady, 2 kids and 2 puppies in the distance.  I said to Michael "lock your doors and we are not picking them up".  He said "it's ok, we'll just stop and talk to them".  The next minute we have 3 ladies hanging off the back of our car holding onto the cage on the roof with 2 dogs in their handbags and 2 kids on our backseat.... we obviously stopped and they were worried about the horses that were on the side of the road attacking them.  I insisted that we would send help when we arrived into the town but it didn't go to plan.

The next thing we are driving and there are 2 more people a man and a women, so they jumped on too.  We moved them onto the sides of the car and kept driving.  The road was getting really bad with sharp rock and I kept thinking what if we do a tyre now we are screwed, we only have one spare.  As they were holding on they said to us "There are more people up ahead".  We came accross another 4 people but only picked up 1 more.  He was a 14 year old boy.  We asked them where they wanted to go and they said the creek which was about another 10 klms up the road.  When we arrived at the creek there was no water, which they all knew so they asked us to drive them into town.  So we travelled about another 15 klms with 6 adults hanging off the car.

When we arrived into the community and onto to bitumen I have never been so releived.  It was really nice to talk to the locals.  They took us past the nurses houses and the police officers houses.  I said "I hope we don't get into trouble for this" and they said "don't worry about it".  The next thing we turn the corner and who should it be the local police.  We all jumped out and the locals jumped off and they ask what was going on.  We told them the story and one policeman was ok and said "you were put in a hard position" and the other said "we are trying to stop that sort of thing happening in the community".  We got a quick photo and got the hell out of there before they notice our badly cracked windscreen.

We couldn't stop laughing about the whole ordeal.  We kept travelling onto Honeymoon Bay.  It was late by the time we arrived and set up camp and had a relaxing night.

The next morning we were hoping to go on a fishing charter but Les the aboriginal owner of Honeymoon Bay was busy and said we could go out in the afternoon.  Well it got too late to go fishing so Les showed the boys how to make spears.  It took about 2 hours and there was many processes involved.  They had to cut their own bamboo down, cut off all the branches, straighten it in the fire and then attach a metal point.

The boys loved making the spears and Les offered to take us crabbing at night so they could use them.  I was abit worried about it as we weren't swimming in the bay for more than a few minutes at a time and I would only let the boys go in about a meter because they have seen crocs and sharks in the bay before.

So we headed off after dinner in the dark with our torches.  We arrived at the next bay and got out of the car.  I noticed a pair of red eyes straight away and said "is that a croc?".  Les said "yes".  He said stay in a line close to the short, we were only ankle deep in the water and he said they wouldn't come near us.  About 90% of the time I had a torch pointed out to see and behind us.  We walked a fair way and saw lots of small crabs, a stonefish and then the boys spotted a crab bigger enough to catch.  They both got their spears out and speared it together.  They were so proud of themselves.  We then headed back to camp and cooked it the local way straight on the coals.  I still can't believe that we did it and survived.

We got up early and watch the sunrise and went out fishing at 6am till 10am.  We all caught heaps of fish by the end of it we were throwing them back as we had too many.  I out fished the boys and got the biggest fish off the day at 73cm long.  It was hard work as most of the time we were fishing with handlines.  

As we had stayed on the Gibb for so much longer than we had planned we were running out of water so we drove back into the town and went to the supermarket and then filled up all our water bottles at the local mission.

We met some lovely people at Kalumburu.  Alot of the people go there for 2-4 months every year to fish and relax.  It's a little slice of paradise.

That night we hung with the other travellers and they packaged up all our fish for us so we could take it with us.

This place is definately a highlight of our trip and we would love to come back again some day.

8 - 9 July 2016 - Days 97 - 98 - Mitchell Falls Gibb River Road

We left Manning Gorge and headed for Drysdale Station when we turned off The Gibb River Road onto Kalumburu Road the road was terrible with corrigations as wide as 30-40 cms.  So no matter how fast you tried to go to skim over the top you couldn't.

We made it to Drysdale and had one of their famous burgers and got petrol.  Then we got back on the road and headed for King Edward River which is at the turnoff to Mitchell Falls and thought we would stay there the night.  On the way with all the corrigation the CB aerial fell off and we thought the nudge bar at the front of the car was going to fall off.  So Michael had to get out in the dust and 35+ heat and do abit of bush mechanics and tighten everything up.

We didn't arrive at King Edward until 2.30pm but we thought why don't we just keep going the extra 80kms and stay at Mitchell Falls for the night.  The road into Mitchell Falls is meant to be one of the worst, we didn't find it too bad just a bit rocky.  When we arrived we couldn't beleive that we were there as we had not planed on going that far and it is a massive achievement to get there.  Michael has done an amazing job of driving the entire time.  I have only driven in towns for about 50 kms without the caravan on the back and he has driven approx. 16,000 kms so far.

That night we were all tired so we had an early night after a camp fire.

The next morning we had a lazy morning and made damper in the fire and set off for The Mitchell Falls walk at 11am.

Before we left Mitch saw a massive green python slither across the road in the camp ground, the track it left in the dirt was massive.  I quickly made sure that the tent was zipped up.

On the way into the Falls the boys stopped off for a quick swim and we looked at some aboriginal art.  The walk in was hot and we really enjoyed swimming in the small pools at the top of the Falls.

We had booked a helicopted to pick us up from the falls and fly us over it before dropping us back to the camp ground.  It gave you a great perspective of the area and the falls.

We were so glad that we had made it this far.