Great Central Road Day 19

Day 19

Well no breeze but plenty of lightning and at some time 20mins of what sounds like heavy rain. You know that stuff that comes down in drops the size of golf balls but no wind at all. Still it does cool things down a little and I have worked out how to make the roof fan draw in outside air through the windows at each end of the bed so it does get a little cooler. But the vent opening handle has broken so I am going to have to fix that tomorrow or the fan/venting system is not going to work properly.

Packed up at dawn but it’s pretty uninteresting light wise so try to creep the truck out of camp without waking everybody. I think the reason people are relaxed about travelling is they sleep a lot and every time they do anything it’s a great accomplishment.

There is not really a lot to see until the Victoria River area, part of Gregory National Park which is in several chunks along this road. It’s quite a large area but I’m pretty sure it’s for those serious off-road people and their tricked out 4WD so I am not inclined to get too far off road in this part of the world.

The Victoria River is quite large and meets and/or crosses the highway at a number of places for the next 100km or so. It is of course very seasonal but like all these northern rivers when they flow they flood. I’m standing here on the old bridge, which replaced the “crossing”, and looking at the new bridge which now does away with the annual week or two wait during the rainy season while the water flooded over the bridge.

There is still quite a lot of water around and they run cruises up and down the river, billed as the last of the true “wild water” tours. I’m pretty sure it’s not actually during the wild season that they run the tours however.

A little further on I stopped for lunch at this bridge to nowhere. There are locked gates on the other end and the sign says “Defense Department” , never heard of it!!

River is still pretty big at that point.

After chatting with a bloke I had met before in Katherine and Kakadu who was sitting in a roadside stop i.e. parking bay, at least with trees and BBq’s and even toilets if you’re game, for the second day and night in a row while waiting for mail to catch up in Kununurra I decided to go on a bit further. The guy at the quarantine station at the WA border recommended a few stops down the road and a caravan park in Kununurra but the turn of to the Ord River Dam appeared and I decided to turn that way instead. It’s quite a spectacular area in many ways. The caravan park offers $20 powered sites with all the facilities and is actually quite nice and I do like to be able to run the air con all night in this weather so here I am. It’s only 4pm (we are back on WA time I realise) so I take the bike off and go for a ride around the dam area while I still have time. It’s absolutely beautiful but they kick you out at 5pm and won’t let you back in until 7am tomorrow.

But I’ll be waiting at the gate . . .

(This is my favourite photo so far.)