​Heading back to Kununurra- 19 September 2017

This is the Carr Boyd range and just over the range us Lake Argyle. You'd never guess but that's what my clever phone told me!

Heading back to Kununurra from Halls Creek in the wake of TCI ( 'the caravan incident'), we traveled though and passed many significant ranges Muellet, Duran, Bungle Bungle, Carr Boyd and O'Donnell. And humongously wide rivers albeit dry beds at the moment. The river beds are flat, wide, rocky and sandy punctuated with river gums and paperbarks. Some of the larger ones are flanked by large stone groins. One can only imagine the amount of water that gushes along their lengths. Flowering kapok everywhere added splashes of brilliant yellow between the trees as the vegetation changed from desert, through mountainous rock and spinifex to the relative lushness of the east Kimberley.

When we cam through Kununurra back in July, this crossing, the Ivanhoe Crossing over or rather through which the mighty Ord River flows, was closed. This time water levels had dropped but it was still a bit water-wing territory. Great fun!

I had my water wings on but I'm still in the car - really!!!

This is the lovely Silver Box which only grows in the wild in the very northern parts of Oz. It is quite beautiful close up and at a distance in a woodland the entire tree layer appears silver. Stunning!

When we hit the turn off to Kununurra (the hwy goes north to Wyndham), we completed the Great Northern Highway, the longest hwy in WA (it was built to bring cattle to the south - more of that later). As a matter of interest albeit probably only to us! we've actually completed a number of hwys in this trip - Route 1, the Gibb River Road, Stuart, Barkly, Tablelands and Savannah Way which stretches from Broome to Cannes. But back to the story ....

We're on the Victoria Hwy (Route 1) but here is is also the Auvergne Stock Route. A rose by any other name eh!?

A couple of days and the van was fixed, thankfully and we headed east towards the Stuart hwy. About 150 km after crossing the NT border we stopped to help a young German couple who had a flat - they didn't have the right lock key to get the wheel off. After 40 mins or more on our sat phone to RAC in the searing heat, the phone battery went flat. Reluctantly we left them there as they decided to flag a car and return to Kununurra - there were plenty passing. We're now waiting to get the phone bill. Gulp!!

I think this is Razorback in the Pinkerton Range north of the Judbarra NP (Gregory NP).

As we approached the Victoria River valley we were driving the Coolibah Stock Route (Victoria Hwy)

Still on the Coolibah Stock Route, the cliffs cut over millennia by the Victoria River, loom deep auburn along side the road. Spectacular!

We headed on through Timber Creek and Judbarra National Park along Victoria Hwy and what I have since discovered a couple of stock routes. Que? One of the brilliant things the iPhone does is give you the location of your pix - which you probably already know. I was puzzled that a couple of mine had stock routes as the location so I looked it up. I was floored! The country is criss-crossed with a dense network of stock routes. https://www.dnrm.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/99624/stock-routes-map.pdf check it out for Qld. All quite formal and gazetted. I knew about the long paddock as travelling stock routes but this blew my mind! State by state, they are all carefully regulated and monitored, permits for this and that. And of course it is the truckies who want roads like the Tanami track sealed to make their transporting of cattle easier (and cheaper). Well I never! So I started delving as you do and came across the story of the Canning Stock Route. I'll leave you to read more about that along with me http://www.australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/canning-stock-route. Who said travelling was an education? This city girl is learning heaps.

This little pet stood guard at No 7 Bore on the Stuart Hwy. We were heading south for the Barkly and Qld border - 3 States in a few days! Way too fast!