Day 86 Start of Gibb River Road (part 1)

Before heading off from Kununurra to the Gibb River Road our car needed some new tyres, as the spare tyre was already used in the Bungle Bungles. Luckily, a tyre shop had two new tyres in the required size available for us and changed them in less than two hours, so we could hit the road to the Gibb River Road. The sign at the start gives you all the information about road closures: everything is open, so Stuart & the car are finally ready to hit this famous road down to Derby for the next five days.

The Durack river crossing still had some water flowing despite it being late in the dry season, explaining why there were some 2WD cars parked just before the crossing. You need to pass this crossing to reach Emma Gorge, which is also visited by many people not doing the Gibb. After getting our day pass at the Emma Gorge Resort, we started our walk pretty soon as the walk is only open to the public til 12am and afterwards only the tour groups booked in at the Emma Gorge Resort are allowed to access the gorge. First third of the walk is easy (ok, still very hot) before you have to scramble over rocks becoming bigger in size to reach the gorge and the swimming pool. Til midday the gorge is in the shade and you cannot take as nice photos as in the afternoon, but still no reason for us to join a pricey tour group. At the gorge you have to walk over smaller rocks into the water, but it is worth to cool down in the clear and cold water. At the right of the gorge, there is a tiny waterfall, which has surprisingly warm water.

After walking back to the car park in the midday heat, we needed a short break to revive as here on the Gibb at that time of the year the sun was even hotter and the air even warmer than at the Bungle Bungles. To our surprise, there was phone reception and Internet so we could read the announcement of Sydney, that the New Years Eve Firework watching areas are open for booking now. To not miss out the opportunity for a ticket with no Internet over the next couple of days on the Gibb we used our break and booked us in for NYE 2022 at The Point at the The Royal Botanic Garden.

Revived and motivated from the booking we were heading back to the Gibb and onwards to the west. The next crossing, often warned to not walk through the water to check the depth due too the salties present, was the Pentecost River Crossing. Well, there was no water at all at the crossing, but some beautiful bird next to the crossing.

Onwards to the west you had on the drive really nice views on the area, so on one of the lookout points, Stuart wanted to get out of the car despite the heat and enjoy the views for a while.

For the night we decided to go to Ellenbrae Station for camping because with the tyre stop in the morning, it was not possible for us to reach Mt Elisabeth station during daylight. Ellenbrae Station offers also the famous scones with jam and cream and we just made it in time before 4pm to also get some. Unfortunately for us, they didn´t offer any dinner options, such as burgers or at least chips, the way we did know it from our Cape York trip. The campground was very well maintained and clean, so we weren´t too sad about this, at the time assuming that the roadhouses on the way of the next days will compensate for that (yes, little we knew...)