Monday, July 19, 2010
El Questro. xxxx
El Questro
Monday 19th
Up at the crack of dawn we left our resting spot and headed to El Questro. We had heard a lot about this place from our good friend Dom who had played there once before.
Travelling into the Kimberlies the landscape changes drastically with massive mountains and sloping hills as far as the eye can see, makes for a nice change to the flat dry dirt we've been used to. This stretch of road was full of wildlife too, apart from the massive beautiful cows we see everywhere roaming the roads, we saw a pack of wild dogs sitting along side the road, at first we thought they were dingos, but coming closer they looked like some kind of bull mastiff, some roos (alive), the biggest eagles I've ever seen having breakfast on some roadkill AND a ginger feral cat running across the road.
There are also a lot more wild flowers and massive boab trees up here, beautiful.
Coming to the El Questro turn off we immediately felt like we had been transported to Mexico, so we put on our favourite Mariachi bands album "Mariachi El Bronx"…quite fitting!!!
All of a sudden there were big Palm trees and tropical plants popping up everywhere and we knew we were up for something "different".
After a long windy 4WD track with our first few successful water crossings we arrived at the El Qestro Township, basically an oasis, our idea of actual paradise. This place had everything I love, from galloping horses to a ranch style bar with massive decorative cow skulls to boot. Holy God…..
After checking in and given directions to our "private" camp spot by the creek we set up and headed off in search of El Questro Gorge. We'd been told this place was beautiful and somewhere nice to swim.
Reaching the gorge track we made our way through 2.5kms of winding rainforest and rocky creeks to a beautiful swimming hole with a little waterfall. It was amazing!! The water soooooo fresh and little fish swimming around us, it didn't feel real!!
Back down the track after a "gorge"ous swim!! We had showers and then went to the bar for happy hour. Sitting around drinking our gin and tonics and Bundy, we met Buddy, he's the local genuine rodeo cowboy and you can't miss him, he's been living here for 25 years and had his own dedicated seat at the pub to prove it, he was the coolest dude we've seen in a long time!!! Knocking back a few drinks and talking to some of the locals we headed back to camp for some vegetable ravioli.
Ben made a great fire and then attempted to make some fruit and maypole syrup damper in our camp cooker…Success!!! It was the best bloody damper either of us had ever tasted and we were stoked!!!!
Off to bed with full bellies, we had an early morning the next day with a visit to Zebidee Springs…Wooohooo!!!
Wolfe Creek.
Wolfe Creek to Leycesters Rest (Ord River)
Sunday 18th
We got up early and headed off to Halls Creek and decided to visit the Wolfe Creek Meteorite along the way. After filling up on fuel we made our way down the LONG corrugated track.(2 hours there, two hours back!!)
Its really hard after seeing the film 'Wolfe Creek' to not feel slightly creeped out on the way there, there's absolutely nothing out here, no one to hear you cry for help anyway!!! And lots of squeaky gates that I had to keep jumping out and opening for us to get through. We couldn't help but think that a big blue F100 was bound to come blaring round the corner at any time!!! Eeeek!!!
But alas, on finally reaching the meteorite we were meet with another bunch of "Grey Nomads" with their squeaky clean 4WD's and pristine caravans. (It kinda too the fun out of it, but was comforting also)
Climbing up the side of this big hole in the ground we were totally unprepared for how massive this thing is!!! It's immense!!!!thinking about what it would have been like to actually be there when the meteorite hit is mind blowing stuff.
We hung out up there for a bit and then headed back down saying hi to some gorgeous tiny red geckos along the way. Driving out of Wolfe Creek there was an old abandoned house that we swear was used as the set in the film, we might be totally wrong but this place was uncanny!!! Ben and I jumped out of the car to take some photos but shat ourselves when a flock of white galas came tearing outta there, scary stuff!!!
Driving back through Halls Creek we decided we didn't wanna stay there and thought it would be better to trying fins a crowded rest area to set up for the night at. We found Leysesters Rest about 100km out of Halls Creek, this place was lovely AND free! wooohoo!! So after cooking up some bush nachos, we jumped in the car and put our seats back for the night. Sweet dreams. x
Fitzroy Crossing.
Saturday 17th July
Up early we said goodbye to our lovely new friend Broome and headed off down the highway and back to the looming red dirt. We were off to Fitzroy Crossing as our first stop on the way to Kunnanurra.
Something that we have really noticed on this trip is that everywhere you go people are telling you different things about where to go and what to do and what not to do!!! It's like a little competition between travellers
"Where have you been?" "Did you see this?" "Oh you've really missed out if you didn't see that"
Ben and I were starting to feel a bit of pressure on the trip, mainly regarding time, and money. We need to be back home in Perth by early October for work and had just had to fork out a bunch of cash in Broome for our ute to be serviced and a new tyre. Talking about it over and over and going through all our options we just decided that we just have to only see and do the things that we can do, this meant not doing The Gibb River Road in all it's entirety.
The fact that our tyres aren't massive and heavy duty means that we would probably spend the whole trip stressing about every little rock and stick on the track!!! So we decided that that would just have to be a separate trip on its own and we would spend the rest of out Broome to Cairns stint chilling out.
Two things that we really did want to do on this leg of the trip were El Questro (South of Wyndam) and Wolfe Creek…..I'm sure we can make these things happen!!!
Still Broome. xxx
Broome 3
Thursday 16th
Because Broome was just sooo beautiful, we decided we couldn't leave and just had to stay one more day!!! We had dinner at Uncle Stevens where him and Sean cooked us up some incredible Spanish Mackarel that they had caught out on the boat that day. I decided that Ben must catch some decent fish on this trip so I told Steve he was taking Ben out the next day while I had some serious relaxing time on the beach. This all worked out perfectly especially since we caught up with our old friend Jorje who said we were welcome to crash at hers. This meant no caravan park fee!!! Yipee!!!
Friday for me consisted of lazing on Cable Beach under my umbrella armed with water, nibbles and a bunch of new magazines…Heaven!!!
For Ben on the other hand, he was at Stevens by ten and far out to the ocean by 11. This was serious fishing, stuff you pay big money to do on a charter boat. Sean worked out the coordinates for where the best fish were biting, but the problems didn't at all lie in finding the fish, it was more about keeping them on the line once they were hooked!!! Big sharks kept swooping in and eating the poor helpless hooked fish!!! This became a real test for the guys, it was a serious race to bring the fish to the top and onto the boat. At one stage Ben even hooked a shark and managed to bring it to the surface, 20 minutes of sweat and determination and he had it up to the boat for Sean to cut the line. The poor shark eyeballing Ben before he darted off was a little creepy to say the least. Ben couldn't believe the abundance of marine life out that far in the ocean, whales, sea snakes, sharks, dolphins and all the many types of fish. Unreal!!!
After a long day on the boat the boys came home with loads of fish, we took our beautiful Spanish Mackarel that Ben had caught and Greg had filleted and cooked it up by the moonlight down on the beach, so pretty.
After this we headed over to Jorje's house and had a nice cuppa with her housemate Salty. He was ace, a gorgeous lil' guy from the UK who was over here doing some work with the local kids here in Broome doing skate events and talks at the local schools. He was mad about music and kept asking me and Ben to play guitar for him. This lead to hilarious beat boxing and some pretty sorry attempts at a few Bob Dylan songs…Fun. xoxoxo
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