We arrived in Derby and stayed at the only caravan park which allowed children. It had a resident albino peacock which happened to live in the tree above our TrakShak. I didn’t know that peacocks could fly, but each night it would fly up to a limb about 4m above the ground and roost for the night.
We only had five reasons to stop at Derby:
1. Reprovision for the Gibb River Road (GRR) – CHECK
2. Speak to family – CHECK
3. Get the internet organised – Didn’t happen
4. Catch mud crabs – We went mud crabbing from the Derby Jetty on 2 occasions. The first occasion was fruitless. On the second attempt with my little crabber and fisher girl, Ella, we caught 2 undersized crabs. One didn’t have any nippers so we named him Nipperless. It was good fun all the same. Just watching the 10m tides come and go was amazing.
5. Tourist stiff – The jetty, self-guided tour of an old house with heaps of local history in each room, and the old jail – CHECK
Goodbye Derby.
On the way to Fitzroy Crossing we checked out a prison boab tree and the longest cattle trough in the southern hemisphere (120m).
We didn’t spend much time in the Fitzroy Crossing township; the caravan park was too flash. It had a nice pool, bar and restaurant. We checked out Geike Gorge. Spectacular! We saw guys fishing, but didn’t see them pull in any barru. They were using cherabin for bait. Cherabin is a fresh water prawn about the size of a tiger prawn with long thin nippers. Why go fishing when there are plenty of these around?
We left Fitzroy Crossing with high spirits; today was the day we hit the dirt. We headed north with the Eaton family for Tunnel Creek. This was an experience we were all looking forward to and we were not let down. Dressed in bathers, shoes and carrying torches we left the car park. As we approached the cave mouth a couple came out, wet to the armpits. That set the pulse racing! We entered the cave. It became darker and darker. Torches were required. Then we had no choice but to enter the water and wade to the next mini beach. It was pitch black when the torches were all out which wasn’t very often as there were 10 of us with torches. Ruby was a little scared and was carried through water that was above her neck. We could see small fish and cherabin in the spotlight. Eight hundred metres from the entrance we exited the tunnel on the other side of the hill. We loved it just as much retracing our steps to the entrance.
Tunnel Creek played a significant part in the early aboriginal/white man history. Over to you JR…
TUNNEL CREEK
Jundamurra’s in town! Oh no, a murderer! Jundamurra is his aboriginal name but the whities called him Pigeon (tweet tweet). Ok, you must be thinking “Who is Jundamurra?” Well here’s your answer.
Jundamurra killed a policeman, a lot of other white people and he terrorised people. Jundamurra ran away. The white people and aboriginal trackers went searching for the murderer and his two assistants who were shot dead in Windjana Gorge (10km down the road). It took three years to find Jundamurra and they found him hiding in the blackness of Tunnel Creek. He was shot and killed in 1897. Tunnel Creek is now a tourist hit!
Now, Tunnel Creek. When I saw Tunnel Creek at first I was honestly a bit nervous, but not scared. It is an underground creek that is pitch-black. I saw plenty of bats and, that means, plenty of bat poo. I didn’t have a torch and because it was so pitch black I couldn’t see a thing ahead. I fell down a 1m cliff on to a sharp rock and bruised my shin. I was fascinated by the amount of bats on the roof and how loud the noise was. I highly recommend Tunnel Creek for its history, location, scenery and nervousness. Tunnel Creek was wicked.
Jack
After Tunnel Creek we headed to Windjana Gorge to set up camp and to take a stroll through the gorge. This was where we first sighted some freshwater crocs. They weren’t too big and would not let us get very close at all. Ella stepped over a brown snake (very poisonous) on the path without knowing it – that was too close.
We had a fire that night and went to bed very excited; tomorrow we would turn onto the GIBB RIVER ROAD!
And so we did. We entered the Gibb River Road and headed north east. It was wide and dusty and corrugated; but that was what we were there for, and that was what the TrakShak was made to cope with.
Our first stop on the GRR was Leonard Gorge in the Leopold Ranges. It was a 1.5km hike to a viewing platform. We were very proud of Ruby for walking the fill length with temperatures in the high 30’s. The view was spectacular. We had read in Kelley’s GRR book that a rough path could be followed down to the canyon and larger waterholes up river. We didn’t find a path but that didn’t stop David forging a track down rock ledges and slippery shale to the canyon floor. Not to be outdone the rest of us followed in his footsteps (including the two 5 year olds) and we made it to the water. A short walk and after climbing some dried up waterfalls we made it to a spectacular swimming hole.
After a long return walk we were ready for another swim! We all agreed that if the rest of the waterholes and gorges were this beautiful we were in for a fantastic GRR experience.
Our next stop was to be Silent Grove, a camp ground close to Bell Falls. At the turn off from the GRR Big Blue conked out! After some poking around I discovered the EFI fuse had blown. It was replaced and we travelled 200m before it blew again; then 100m and it blew again. Now we were out of fuses!
David returned about 20 minutes later. That was when I noticed a shock absorber on his TrakShak had busted and his spring was hanging out! So there we were; both broken down on the same corner. This story could go on and on, but suffice to say that a trip into Imintji Roadhouse the next morning got me a heap more fuses and Dave a stack of fencing wire which we hoped would be enough to allow us to limp back to Derby via the direct route.
We did check out Bell Gorge which was another magnificent place with little falls and large swimming holes. Check these out:
Wherever we went we got hot.
Big Blue didn’t skip a beat all the way back to Derby and the auto electrician couldn’t find any problems. So we stocked up with fuses, filled up the fuel tanks, bought more food and headed back…
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