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| Ta da! the annex is back! |
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| The view from our tent at Kununurra Campground |
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| view over Kununurra |
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| Reattaching the tent pole tubes that got shaken off on the Gibb River Road |
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We got away from Home Valley Station nice and early and headed straight for Emma Gorge – our last section of the Gibb River Road. The road there takes you alongside the Cockburn Range which is just beautiful, lovely scenery, and what I was hoping for from the Gibb River Road (pity it only came at the end!). Emma Gorge, although it’s part of the same conglomerate that owns El Questro, is a fantastic gorge. A relatively energetic walk in over boulders along what’s a creek at the moment, and then at the end you get right into the gorge, ending in a dead end with amazing 75m walls which a waterfall comes over, into a pool where you can swim. On one side of the pool there’s a thermal spring coming through a crack in the rock, so the kids hung out there while we had a dip in the pool (which was pretty chilly but still lovely after that walk in the sun). There were lots of people there (lots of people everywhere on the GRRd!) and it was a nice way to end our trip along the road. After a sandwich lunch we headed straight for Kununurra on the tarmac (so smooth and silent!). We had originally planned to just go straight down towards Purnululu but after our poles getting bent, we needed to head for a town to try and replace them. We happened to meet the Ralhs in Coles (as you do) stocking up like we were, as they had been to Wyndham in the meantime. They talked us into staying with them at a free camp just 12k out of town which was fun for adults and kids alike. We weren’t quite as lucky as we would have liked in terms of annex tent poles, Nick went to every store in town (not such a big town) that might sell something like them, asked for ideas, and ended up coming up with a solution – we need 3 different types of poles for the annex, standard poles with a pointy end (long and short), long poles with a hook on one end and a flat other end with a hole to support the roof and connect the tent frame and the straight poles, and finally short poles with flat ends with holes to cross between the tall standing poles. Anyway to cut a long story short he bought some standard poles and used pliers to bend the pointy ends of some into hooks, then banged the other end flat with a hammer, and drilled holes in the ends that needed them. The Ralhs had found out that a rodeo was coming into to Kununurra this weekend so they talked us into staying Saturday night as well, which wasn’t that hard because we needed the day to create these new tent poles, and more importantly, needed to borrow a drill to do it. So we all came in to a caravan park at 9.30am and the kind owners lent us their cordless drill and Nick worked away, and by lunchtime we had our annex up again! I was very impressed, and even more so when he then got to work to fix the pole tube back onto the tool box of the trailer so we’re all repaired up and ready to go. I got another load of washing done, replied to emails, paid bills etc and we decided to go to the rodeo in the evening, which had been recommended by someone else staying at the campsite. We even relaxed at the tents for a pre-rodeo drink, only to get out there at 6.30pm, sit down on the grass to watch and hear the announcer say ‘and this will be our last event for today, we’d like to thank you all for coming, please stay to hear local band xyz’. We weren’t very impressed since the people on the gate had told us that the rodeo action would go until 8.30pm, but they were nice enough to give us our money back. It was a bit disappointing because we haven’t been to one before and were looking forward to it, but hopefully we’ll find another one along the way.
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