Day 18 Purnululu to Kununurra

This morning we awoke early again and packed up at a leisurely pace. Even so, we are getting very quick at it. The kids helped… a bit… Then we set off back to the highway and towards Kununurra. We had to slow down for a small mob of Brahman cattle lazily crossing the road near Warmun and the 4 Wedgetail Eagles that emerged from the scrub as we approached. We put a bit of fuel in there, but at $2/litre it was a bit rich to fill the tank.

We turned off the Great Northern Highway for the first time this trip and arrived in beautiful Kununurra at lunchtime. The Discovery Lake Kununurra caravan park is lovely. We have a waterfront site with beautiful views of the Ord river and a friendly freshwater crocodile called George, who arrives at 4:30pm each day to check out the campers. He is missing the foot off one hind leg and half his lower jaw and is about 5 foot long. Ashley kicked a rock into the river earlier in the day and his thong went with it. We were too chicken to venture in to retrieve it but a fellow camper cast their fishing lure out and reeled the thong in.

Our camping neighbours are another family with 3 kids from Perth and the children have all become good friends. I have done 4 loads of washing to cover the past very dirty days of camping. At $4 a load, I'm glad we saved all those gold coins over the past 6 months! We are here for 3 nights. It is lovely to be able to just set up camp and relax for a while. I have booked us into a caravan park at Lake Argyle on Sunday and a sunset cruise of the lake that afternoon, so our itinerary has changed a bit. We have decided to skip Victoria River and drive straight through to Katherine instead, which gives us the extra day around here to enjoy the beauty of Kununurra.

 

This afternoon we have done the grocery shopping, fuelled up the car and Rob has been washing the car's interior and cleaning all the door trims of the accumulated red dust. We have found a new flavour of Rekorderlig Cider: Mango and Raspberry - mmm! Just after sunset a huge flock of bats flew overhead - so many it took a good ten minutes for them all to pass by. Very cool. I wonder what tomorrow will hold?