Trevor & Jonathans Cruise & Trip to the Far East and Australia 2016

Day 80 - Thursday July 28th 2016 - Halls Creek to Kununurra, Western Australia

Well first of all can I just acknowledge that we are on day 80, yes really day 80! That’s a serious amount of time to have passed. In a way it feels like we are on a new holiday having started all over again in Australia but no we have certainly come a long way since we got on that boat in Barcelona and the last couple of days we have been absolutely in the middle of nowhere, literally!

There is no way on this earth that we could live in a place like Fitzroy Crossing or Halls Creek, I would be sent to the asylum for crazy people but they say the world takes all sort to make it go round and the people that live in these really remote places must have a special skill for managing boredom.

We also have a question. What do the aborigines do all day? Do they literally just sit on the pavements or on the grass verges all day? I don’t know the answer but in Fitzroy Crossing and Halls Creek that’s all they seem to do.

There is no alcohol on sale there, it’s all managed in restaurants or hotels only so they can’t get drunk all day but what do they do? Well, you can buy alcohol but nothing over 2.4 degree proof, so very weak lager or a shandy!

Anyway rant over, something really quite strange happened this morning (and it wasn’t even a tennis day). Jonathan woke up before Trevor and proceeded to disturb him enough that Trevor felt no choice but to get the day going……bless him.

It was another road trip day so we both got through the bathroom and had breakfast in quick succession of each other and we left the campsite and just gone 0830 in the morning.

I don’t know what but after yesterday’s drive seemingly taking so long this one was quite the opposite and by 1215 we were parked up at the most glorious campsite but we will come to that in a bit.

The drive to Kununurra had been pretty much uneventful with the same old landscapes passing us by. I really don’t think that Australia has got any more changes of landscape to serve us up, we might have seen it all apart from maybe the dramatic cliffs of the ocean road out of Adelaide.

We drove through bush and red soil, loose cattle grazing at the side of the road. We saw horses grazing, the odd dead Skippy and various rock formations from polished balls to canyons or gorges (not sure what the difference is to be honest).

The landscape only really changed as we got about an hour out of our destination. Now it was hilly, almost mountainous in places. The other big change was that the rivers and creeks started to have a bit of water in them which is most unusual, certainly different from what we have seen so far on this trip.

Kununurra itself seems to be surrounded by water. You drive over a dam to get into the town and this divides the lake. It is seriously very pretty indeed, the lake is surrounded by grassy banks and trees and like we said it is really picturesque.

Our campsite sits on a headland right next to the lake itself so as long as we don’t encounter any of the resident freshwater crocs walking around the site this has to win best campsite of our tour so far.

As we had arrived at lunch time we found our pitch, reversed in and Trev got on and made us some lunch. If you’re wondering? It was roast beef and mustard sandwiches with a few cheese and crackers on the side. We walked around the campsite after lunch, taking in the lake views that surround us, again, it’s beautiful.

With our bellies full enough we packed up the van, washed up (the camp kitchen is right next to the lake, so washing up was far from a chore) and headed of into the centre of town to see what Kununurra had to offer us. We had made no plans whilst we were here, although we are surrounded by national parks so I am sure that they will figure in some part of the next day.

Our first stop was a bottle shop (yes I know what you’re thinking, priorities). Trev has been dreaming of sitting out in his camp chair with a cold beer for days but we have been in aborigine country so not allowed to buy any so this is the first town in four days that we could get him his longed for little creature’s pale ale. We bought a couple of bottles of red wine as well as a backup, you know, just in case.

The town is actually quite sizable to be honest, and it feels quite nice as we drove through trying to take it all in. It’s certainly a massive change to our last two stops in Fitzroy Crossing and Halls Creek although there are still groups of aborigines sitting around in random places.

Trev had looked a few thigs up on TripAdvisior prior to arriving and one of the things that had leapt off the screen to him had been a place called the Hoochery. It is apparently the oldest operating legal still in Western Australia. They produce rums and whiskey ( and we all know how Trev loves his Whisky) so off we went about 15kms out of town in search of booze.

We found it, a metal farm shed is what it looked like in the middle of crop fields on the outskirts of town. This is the first time we have seen any flat fields like this, obviously growing some form of food source (we thought it was potatoes).

So back to the rum, we headed inside this corrugated iron shed expecting a distillery and a mini tour but to be honest it was more like a café. Trev ordered his tasting tray of a corn whiskey (never tried that before, their best premium dark rum and a mango liquer. The only one that Trev gave his seal of approval to was the dark rum and even I have to agree the other two didn’t smell particularly great at all. Trev was certainly in no rush to head off to the shop and part with an average of $124 for a bottle of anything that he had tasted.

I should come clean here though and admit that we did both have a slab of cake each (rum inspired) with a coffee as well.

We left the Hoochery behind us, rather disappointed in it to be honest but there you go and headed back into town. One good thing in Australia in the smaller towns is that they signpost everything so the plan was to just drive around and read all the blue and brown signs and see if anything took our fancy to look at/stop at.

Our first port of call was back down at the water again at the other end of Lake Kununurra, again a stunning view and backdrop then it was right up to the other end of the town where the dam is. We got out and took a few pictures, not the best as you were not allowed to walk across the top of the dam, it was no pedestrian access so we couldn’t get a good viewpoint.

That was our day, as the campsite was just so pretty we decided to head back, connect up the electrics and just enjoy sitting by the lake and all that had to offer. I sat out and wrote the very blog that you are reading now, my view distracting me every time I looked up from the screen. There was a cool breeze blowing and the outside temperature was just the right side of warm. Told you it was perfect.

The campsite were offering beef rolls with gravy right down on the river tonight at the camp kitchen and all for a $5 donation to some local charity. It sounded too good to miss so at five o’clock Trev duly queued up to get two rolls for a tenner.

We sat and watched the sun go down over the lake, it was really beautiful although we had forgotten one crucial thing, to shut the van door.

As we are surrounded by trees and right by the river, it’s beautiful as I have said many times but it also means that we are basically situated in fly and mosquito paradise and the van was now full of them all buzzing around the lights.

We are not in possession of any fly spray or anything like that but we did have some mosquito protection spray so that was our only solution to the problem. We sprayed all the lights in the van then sat back as all the flying things inside the van slowly got stuck to the lights and the sticky residue of the spray. It certainly was not pretty at all but it cleared the van and we were able to go in and get out of the swarms of them outside on our hard standing.

Trev had managed to have his camp site moment as he called it. Sat out on a chair, cold beer in hand and a beef sandwich, life was sweet.

Now the van was de fly’ed and mosquito free we closed the door and sat in with a bottle of wine some cheese and crackers and our iPad’s. As per usual the rest of the campsite seemed to be in darkness and there was not a sound to be heard, people really do go to bed early in these places.

Our conversations had inevitably started to revolve around going back to the UK in under a week, seeing family and catching up with friends. Its Brighton Pride weekend the weekend that we get back so our friends will be in town and it would be nice to see them. We got our tickets sorted through Trevor Edwards and actually had a bit of a Facebook phone call with each other as well as ringing Rachael on FaceTime.

Our return to real life was looming with the next few months looking really busy going back and forth to the UK for various things but in the mean time we have a few more days to make the most of.