Wed 20th August – Day 102: Gregory National Park – Kununurra

Another blue sky dawned with not a cloud in sight. The various young birds started up at daybreak demanding food, while their parents scrambled to find something. No different in our camper as the kids jumped into bed, first for a cuddle, but quickly progressing to “what’s for breakfast?”
Narratives today and the kids have written great, imaginative stories. Toby’s about the reptile park he wants to run and Chloe about her real life Teddy Bear ‘Bongo’. School done we set off west towards Kununurra and the WA border where all our fruit, vegies and honey will have to be handed over and placed in the bin – such a waste, we will have a fruit and salad feast today just before the crossing.
The Kimberley region covers an area of 421,000km2 (ie. 5 times the size of Tasmania or 17 times the size of the UK) – our plan was to see it in 2 weeks - Ha Ha!!
Kununurra, meaning “Meeting of the Waters” is a relatively new town, established in 1963 principally to service the Ord Irrigation Area. The Diversion Dam was built across the Ord river creating Lake Kununurra, to back up the wet season flood waters, making agriculture a viable option year round. In 1972 the Ord River Dam Wall, 50km upstream from the Diversion Dam flooded the million acre Durack Station to create Lake Argyle with an extreme flood capacity of 55 times the volume of Sydney Harbour. Today large areas are being opened up to irrigation and crops like sugarcane, rockmelons, bananas, watermelons, mangoes, chickpeas and maize give very high yields. At present only 10% of Lake Argyle’s water is used for irrigation, the remainder is stored or diverted back down the lower Ord River and out to the coast. Oh for the pipeline to Sydney eh!!
We settled in to our camp site and dropped into slumberland. We all dreamed of duff duff music, hang on it’s not a dream – oh no not again. Another call to the local fuzz revealed that the camp ground bordered the local Aborginal community and it was ‘pub night’. “Don’t worry Sir we’ll send a car around straight away” barked Sergeant Giles. At 3:30am they were still celebrating the closure of the pub at 11pm with their own version of a Corroberee. With the knowledge it was pension day coming up we resigned ourselves to the fact that our taxes were in fact be well spent on hand outs. We sent an email to our stock broker the next morning advising him to buy shares in what ever company made 30 pack VB’s and the boxes of grape fruit juice.
Ivanhoe Big 4 Park (powered $39/night)