Day 76-77 Timber Creek to Kununurra

It´s time to leave the Darwin area and head over to Kununurra for the Gibb River Road and Broome later. Due too the enormous distances here, we made one stop at Katherine (4-5h driving) before heading to Kununurra (~6h driving) with some stops around Timber Creek at lookouts on the way to stretch the legs.

First stop is at the Victoria River Roadhouse: just a funny sign, not even a real coffee available. So Stuart wanted to visit the Victoria River Gorge around the corner. Well, there is the Victoria River, but no Gorge to see. As some men were getting their boat out of the water, Stuart was brave for a photo near the water edge. The drive to the Victoria river had some nice views on red stone formations, so lots of photo stops before heading to the old crossing at Victoria River. Not much water left so late in the dry season, so the old crossing with the steep exit was easy to spot.

The next drive took us to Joe Creek with more nice views on red stone formations. The Policemen Lookout had some nice views on the area and the Victoria River. Although we could hear some people talking & fishing near the river´s edge, we decided that it is not worth the croc risk to walk down to the river.

The next lookout was once named Escarpment Lookouts and once Victoria Lookout, so both names describe pretty well, what you can see. At the lookout there are also some information on soldiers positioned in the area during the war with Japan. On the road again, there is at the side the Bradshaw Bridge, on which you are only allowed to walk but not drive over. From the bridge we didn´t spot any crocs, but a snake on the edge of the river.

The last stop in Northern Territory was Gregory Tree, a boab tree, which we haven´t seen before on our walks. On the tree are dates carved by the explorer Gregory, who had his camp set up here at this time and supposedly named the area Timber Creek.

With this last stop we left the Northern Territory, but before we were allowed to enter Western Australia there was a Quarantine Station: no fruits, veges, honey, etc. Luckily we had a nice guy, who had a quick look in and around our car, we dumped the honey and leftover onion, so we were ready to to enter Western Australia. Other travellers weren´t so lucky and had to empty almost everything of the car at the check-point.

With some day time left over to explore Kununurra we went for the National Park often described as the "Mini Bungle Bungles": the Mirimia National Park. From the car park, there is one longer and three shorter walks to explore the park, so we decided to go for the Demboong Banan Trail, which goes around the base of the stone formations. The Derdbe-gerring Banan walk also went around the stone formations at another part of the park but with another short but steep walk up to a nice lookout over the park. Although it was already late in the afternoon, it was with about 36C still extremely hot and gave us an idea how the next days will be like.