DAY 59 & 60 - KUNUNURRA HERE WE COME…..

We left Lake Argyle around 9am to head to Kununurra.  We only had a 70km drive today.  The views driving out of Lake Argyle are really quite stunning.  Steve did stop at the Spillway to have a good look at it, and photograph the spillway bridge.  We had seen photos whilst on our boat trip of the wet season in 2011 when the water was over the spillway, and the volume of water passing over it almost washed the bridge away.  Looking at it today, it is hard to believe the amount of water that must have passed through it.  

Spillway from Lake Argyle

Must have been a huge amount of water flowing through here in 2011

Whilst we had stopped here to look at the spillway, Steve noticed the body shape of a crocodile in the sand.  Obviously one had been up on the back a few hours earlier sunning itself.  

There had been a big Croc up on the banking sunning itself this morning

We arrived in Kununurra just before 10am and headed to the Showgrounds.  We are winging our accommodation at the moment, and the showgrounds had been recommended to us, along with it have good rap ups on Wiki Camps.  

We were wondering though whether it might have been closed as we were coming to the end of the season.  Appartently they have now obtained a Caravan Park Licence, so the park can remain open all year.  The Agricultural Society had no choice but to do this, as the council had shut them down for three years.  They are now licenced to take 23 vans, and we were fortunate enough to get a place here.   The good thing about staying here was that it was only $30 a night, with power, water and the bonus being that you could wash for free.   We booked in for four nights…

Our first day in Kununurra was spent doing mundane household chores like catching up on the washing.  Having free washing was a bonus so we decided to make the most of our time here and make sure everything got a wash whilst we were here,  everything from towels, doona covers, pillows, you name it we washed it.  

After our washing was all done, dried and folded, we headed out to do a big grocery shop at Coles.  We pretty much needed a restock on almost everything, as we had nothing fresh left and even our meat was pretty low.  

By the time we got home from showing, and stored everything away, we only had enough time to drive up to Kelly’s Knob to climb up and watch the sunset.  

The sunset from up here was stunning.  It was a little difficult to get up there, as there is no real path, you literally have to climb over rocks or step up over them to get to the lookout.  Kathy had paced a snack and a cuppa for us to enjoy up there, but with the terrain so difficult, we decided that we really didn’t want to negotiate coming down from there in the dark, so we ended up coming straight down.  

Our first full day in Kununurra saw us head out to explore the town….

I had hurt my back again at Lake Argyle so one of the first things for me to do was find a Chiropractor and book in for a back adjustment.  Not as easy as it seems.  There is only one practice in Kununurra and they are not particularly good at returning your phone calls, so I actually wanted to go into their clinic and see if I could book an appointment.  The only thing was though that it was Wednesday and they don’t open until 12 noon.  

We decided to go check out Swim Beach in Kununurra, which is the ski gardens situated on Lake Kununurra.  There is actually a sandy patch there that represents a beach and it is very close to the Diversion Dam (another place we wanted to check out)

Swim Beach at Kununurra

Lake Kununurra

Diversion Dam

Beach area at Swim Beach - Kununurra

Lovely big Boab trees at Swim Beach

Picnic Area

Playground at Swim Beach

I found this tree rather amazing.. Instead of growing up it was growing horizontal

It was quite a nice area and the water looked pretty clear.  We made our way back into town and stopped off at the Lily Creek Lagoon to check out the Celebrity Tree Park here.  We spent quite a bit of time wandering around this park reading the names of many of the celebrities who had planted trees here.  I actually thought this was a good idea, be nice to have something like this back home…

Fruit from the Boab Tree

Lily Creek Lagoon

There were some lovely picnic areas here and we wandered along the boardwalk down to the boat ramp for Steve to check out… 

Dreaming

  

Fish in Lily Creek Lagoon..

 The only thing that saddened me here was the amount of rubbish that was left by the Indigenous community that were sitting on the bank when we arrived.  They just hopped up and left and left of their rubbish on the ground.  This really surprised me as we have been in a lot of their country this holidays where we have been asked to respect their country and stick to paths and leave it clean.  I know of figured that all Australia belonged to all Australian so therefore even though it was in town, we should all be looking after our land and taking our rubbish with us.  A little, like double standards really. 

On our way back into town, we went and found the Chiropractor and I was able to have a cancellation booking at 2.40pm in the afternoon.  That suited us perfectly as we wanted to head out to El Questro tomorrow for the day.

By now it was lunch time, and whilst we were in the Info Centre yesterday, Kathy had found a Subway brochure saying that they had seniors discounts on Subway, so we thought we would go use our discount and have lunch there…

.

Best Subway, I think I have ever had.  It was loaded with chicken, more so than what we get in Qld, and the girls behind the country were lovely, friendly, and so helpful.  It was a hot day, so we ended up sitting at the tables and chairs in there and eating our lunch.

By the time, we had finished lunch it we had about a little over half an hour until my appointment.  As the Kununurra Museum was just around the corner from Subway we thought we would drop in there for a quick visit and see if it was worthwhile coming back later to spend more time there… It was only a gold coin donation for entry.  

The place was jam packed with memorabilia, almost too much, it was hard to know where to start.  The guy in there was obviously very knowledgeable about the local region, and very passionate about it all, but it wasn’t organised in any great order for us to follow a story, and he was busy helping another lass that was in there.  We spent about twenty minutes there before leaving to go and catch my appointment.  

The other’s dropped me off and went out to check out the Sandalwood farms and small crops that the region is famous for.  They also visited the Hoochery where the local rum is made.  It was whilst they were here that I rang them to come pick me back up. 

After my visit to the chiropractor, we continued our drive around town.  The boys had found that the ORD Co-op sold fuel to the general public and it was so much cheaper, $126.8 cpl as opposed to 144.5cpl in town, so we filled up here before heading out to check out Ivanhoe Crossing.  (Steve had heard there was good fishing out here).

We also saw this little snake just near the door to the car. Can't beleive we missed it when the boys first stepped out.  Once it knew we were aware of it, he took off at a pretty fast pace.  Not sure what kind of snake it was.

Snake on the driveway when we filled up with fuel.

We ended up dropping into a couple of roadside stalls on our way out there and picked up some cheap fruit and vegies as well.  

 The Crossing was quite a picturesque sort of place and there were several people actually fishing off the crossing.  They are gamer than I am with signs everywhere say there are Crocodiles in the waterways in this area.   Since Steve was pretty excited by what he saw and had his heart set on returning Friday morning for a fish. 

 I couldn't beleive that these guys were going to go across the crossing even when there was a huge road block in the way, saying "Road Clossed". 

 Steve checks out some spots for his Friday Fishing..

We arrived back at the Caravan Park about half an hour before sunset, and Steve and Ian were pretty keen to go and climb up to the top of Kelly’s Knob (and not just the smaller viewing platform that we had been on yesterday) to watch the sun set again.  I decided to stay back at the park, as my back and knee were still sensitive and I did not want to hurt it again.  

I love the look of these flowers,  the locals say they are a pest

Views of Kununurra from Kelly's Knob

Mini Bungle Bungles in the background

You can just see our caravan in the Showgrounds Caravan Park

Mini Bungle Bungles in Kununurra

The photos they took were stunning.  What a beautiful sunset…

One of my favourite photos

 We are enjoying staying at the Showgrounds, even though the sites have a bit of dirt on them, at least we are in shade, lovely big shady trees, and a beautiful green oval with sitting just in front of our van.  Everyone here is so friendly too.