Month: August 2015

A couple of days ago we celebrated our 48th anniversary with a dinner at the Savannah Restaurant at Knotts Crossing Resort in Katherine. Quite swish, getting out of the shorts for once and into a long sleeved shirt and jeans. Very formal eh?
And yesterday we arrived in Batchelor ( about 100 km from Darwin) to catch up with our friends Bill and Maxine Blower. We only had one night in each of Lake Argyle, Victoria River and Katherine, knowing that we would be returning to Katherine after Darwin and Kakadu before heading toward Mt Isa and the inland road south thru Longreach and Winton. Many folk tell us it is quite depressing for they haven’t had rain in a few years, but the convoys of grey nomads are still passing and helping local economy. We hope to be in Toowoomba in time for the flower festival September 19 and catching up with Dorothy O’Connor.
But today (Friday) we spent the day in the Litchfield National Park, which is more my scene with sealed roads and natty little concrete pathways to the falls from the carparks.
It being so nice here we plan another night in Batchelor before heading for Darwin on Sunday.

It does my heart proud to see Lake Argyle and marvel at the collective feat of pioneers, engineers, hydrologists, and labourers with their families and politicians who pulled off this huge bit of water magic. In Australia this is perhaps the last major life giving miracle of nature we have witnessed in over forty years. With a grand vision, our Aussie nation took on the role of nature’s hand-maiden to create, ever-so-simply, a long term fresh water source of breath taking proportions.
The political struggles to achieve the dream are legendary.
So too are the cropping failures over the decades.
From memory it was Charlie Court, then development minister sparring with P.M. Robert ( pig-iron Bob) Menzies for federal funding. And these days Colin Barnett has announced that the dam wall will be heightened by four metres to provide an additional 100,000 hectares of agricultural land.
After reading and hearing so much about the Ord project over the decades, it is awesome to finally take a look at it.
Over 1,000 square kilometres of fresh water and the comparisons beggar belief ( if you can indeed believe them!). Like 16 times bigger than Sydney Harbour or 5 times bigger than Port Phillip Bay.
Hooey to comparisons. This is a very bloody big body of water.
The adding of 4 metres more of dam wall beginning next year, will make Lake Argyle 2,000 square kilometres in size, effectively doubling its capacity.
And the crops of the past that failed? Sufficient to say the vision still remains firmly rooted in those who would invest in the future marriage of water and fertile soils to finally succeed.

But today it was our turn to sail upon this beautiful waterway.

How stunning to at last actually have contact with the results. Travelling with like-minded boomer nomads, who all agree with, support and marvel at the enormity of the vision that brought all this to reality.

We had a tumultuous day on Lake Argyle yesterday and we head for Timber Creek en-route to Katherine in the NT. today, just over the border with NT our clocks advance one and a half hours to central time.

No Telstra* in this part of the world from Argyle to Victoria Creek where we are tonight being beyond Timber Creek and just 200km drive Wednesday to reach Katherine. * just purchased WiFi called Roamin’

Smartish out of bed this morning and into the car wash, vacuum the interior, dust the dashboard, fill the tank and back home to pack up. For today we were off to Lake Argyle and the caravan park situated on the shoreline.
But no!
A quick review of our 5 nights in Kununurra revealed we had only been here four nights.
So what to do when you have an unexpected day off?
Back to read more of the plaques in Celebrity Park and go to lunch at the Country Club Resort, an oasis in the centre of the city. Kelly’s Bar and Grill yum, yum yum!
We like Kununurra.

We spent Saturday visiting a couple of parks, shopping and taking in the hero event on the Kununurra calendar, the rodeo. After two months on the road we have been accepted as real nomads, for one couple from the Bungle Bungles emailed us enquiring what we were doing Saturday night. We said rodeo and when we got there we met up with another couple from Wyndham, so all six sat proudly together (in our own chairs!) on the hill overlooking the action.

Again, difficult to get the pictures in sequence.

I was here about 40 years ago and cannot equate today’s townsite with what I saw four decades ago. Sufficient to say Kununurra still does not have a copiousness about it. Streets and verges are neat—-nice for judging tidy towns competitions—-with the police station and local courthouse the two stand-out architectural pieces. There’s Coles (difficult to actually find) and the usual IGA, strangely called the tuckerbox, a very refined tropical paradise property housing the country club resort and all nestled in a Walter Burley Griffin type urban street design.
Setting out yesterday morning I felt largely ho-hum about this hydrological wonderland. And just like Cuba Gooding Jnr in that movie with Mr Roast Leg of Lamb (TC) kept repeating “show me the money; show me the money; show me the money” is exactly what I wanted from this East Kimberley locale.
It was then that we found Weaber Plains Road and ventured way out of town where we found “the money” or the essential substance of Kununurra.

Vast tracts of farming land with a healthy superabundance of sunflowers, quinoa, flowers, chia, melons, mangoes and over 6,000 hectares of sandalwood. The lifeblood without which there would not be a Kununurra.
Mountain ranges and geological fault lines frame the farming, with abundant irrigation water caressing the fertile plains with the occasional hawke circling lazily against a big blue sky.