Sweeping across Australia

Hello.

Sorry for the lack of contact recently. Since we left Katherine, things got very remote. We've done a lot of long and hot driving in the past 10 days or so which gave us chance to test the new car, which has so far been pretty faultless aside from one small matter which we'll come to later.

From Katherine we got on the highway towards the west coast, crossing the border into Western Australia, where they take things like honey from you in case it kills their bees. They also have a lot of literature about the cane toad, which they seem to think they'll be able to stop reaching WA, but that seems a bit unrealistic given it's progress across the country so far.

Anyway, first stop in WA was a mid-sized town called Kununurra. We had a few days there as it was a decent base to visit a few things in that area. First was a trip to the north and a town called Wyndham which is where 5 major rivers in the area all converge to head into the ocean. It's quite impressive.

On our way back from there we decided to take a 4WD track instead of the normal highway. After about 20kms we managed to find a piece of rusty old steel which ripped a large hole in our left rear tyre (spookily the same corner of the car that our Staples 2 Naples car had 3 tyre failures on...). After a few minutes of puzzle-solving as we worked out how to get the spare tyre off its bracket, we got the spare on and carried on our bumpy way.

The highlight of taking this road back was a river crossing at about 30cm deep. The car handled this fine although we got told off for going too fast by some of the locals who were fishing and swimming in the river, because the wake from our huge bull bar sent a large wave splashing over them. Tee hee.

The major sight to see on the road from Katherine to Broome is the Purnululu national park, aka the Bungle Bungle. Entry is for 4WD only so we were keen to get in there before the rains came and closed it. Brett is travelling in a campervan so we cleared some of our stuff out and he was going to come in with us.

But, when we arrived they told us it was closed. The rain had beaten us and the track was too likely to get damaged by 4WDs. Bugger. So we went back to a roadhouse, set up the tent and got drunk instead.

We had a big drive from there to the next stop which was Fitzroy Crossing, and then we parted ways with Brett as we decided to cut through a 4WD track up to the Gibb River Rd. This is another 4WD track but it's hundreds of km long and runs parallel to the main highway. We stopped at a couple of national parks on the way through; Tunnel Creek and Widjana Gorge.

Tunnel Creek is basically a creek running through a mountain and if you've got a decent torch and a pair of shoes you can walk right through. Our little maglite and flip-flops weren't up to the task, and the fact that it looked downright scary in there meant we jumped back in the car and continued bouncing our way down the track.

At Widjana Gorge we met a couple who were doing a charity drive from the UK to New Zealand. We ended up chatting to them for an hour and ended up running out of time to see the Gorge.

When we finally joined the Gibb River Road it was about 130km from the end and that part is in pretty good condition, the last 60km or so being single lane tarmac (and mind-numbingly straight).

At it's end we arrived in a town called Derby, confusingly pronounced Durby. Although when you think about it, Derby probably should be pronounced Durby. Anyway, there wasn't much to see other than Australias biggest tidal difference (which at 12 metres is quite impressive), and an annual local art auction which we stumbled on last night, intentionally without our wallets.

The sights of Derby took us a couple of hours, so this morning we arrived at what looks like being our final destination of 2006 - Broome.

Hope you're all enjoying christmas, and that my brother Dave had a nice birthday last week - just 42 years old!

Piccies to follow...