Yesterday was a write-off… we had a long awaited day of rest…
Today is a new day… and for all our Perth and Melbourne friends,
it is 35 degrees here…
Today’s plan was to explore Wyndham and the
surrounding area. We headed out of the
caravan park and turned right instead of left…. oops…and so made an impromptu
visit to Ivanhoe’s Crossing. This used
to be the only way to get from Kununurra to Wyndham. There is now a causeway to get you there and
unfortunately, due to structural damage the council has placed this massive
rock on the road so you can no longer drive over the crossing. I don’t know about you, but I reckon it would
be a bit nerve-wracking driving over that… it seemed like there was a torrent
of water flowing over the edge…
From the crossing we back-tracked to where we were supposed to be to head up to Wyndham. Along the way we stopped at “The Grotto”. It is a 300ft waterfall that plunges into a pool at the base of the cliffs. However, you guessed it, there is no water flowing during the dry season so there is only a stagnant pool at the bottom. The sign said there were 140 steps to the bottom… but I only counted 132…
It was a pretty pool at the bottom. No doubt it would be spectacular during the wet season with water flowing over the waterfall. The water in the pool wasn’t too bad either, there just seemed to be a bit of scum on the top…but certainly not appealing enough to go for a swim
There were a couple of rope swings. One of them was the mother of all rope swings with a rope that was about 3 inches thick. The boys were tempted…
From the Grotto we ducked in for a look at Parry’s Lagoon Farm Stay, where we would have camped after El Questro if we hadn’t run out of food… Then we found the Marlgu Billabong…. and I was in bird-watching heaven!
Thankfully my enthusiasm has rubbed off on the kids. Aiden gets as excited as I do about spotting a new bird on our list and I think he has just about memorised parts of the bird book. This was his first glimpse of a Brolga. We had been keeping our eyes open for the past week or so but this was the first time we had seen them… and of course, once we saw our first Brolga we then saw them everywhere for rest of the day… I was pleased he saw Star Finches for the first time too. We saw a heap of new birds and of course, there were several crocs sunning themselves on the banks.
Incidentally, our bird-spotting check list is sitting on
about 90 birds. That means we have seen
and identified 90 different birds…
We visited a few sites around town before heading home via some more aboriginal cave paintings and another Prison Boab Tree
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