Big Horse Creek and Bungle Bungles (Pernalulu)

We are slowly crossing WA and are currently in Halls Creek.  The van park is all dirt and a few trees.  People packed in here for the night and all took off again for another day going NSEand W.  We will have an easy day, we hope, and will visit some beautiful spots out on the "back road to Kununurra", all dust and corrugations, but there are hidden gems to find along that road.  We discovered some of them in the late afternoon yesterday.

 

We've been doing a fair bit of free camping.  One stop was Big Horse Creek on the Victoria River, before Kununurra.  We spent minimal time in Kununurra, just visiting the Christian Broadcasting Station, HCJB, short wave transmissions to the South Pacific and to Asia.  It was good to catch up with all they are achieving there.  With the aid of volunteers it is amazing what they have done putting up the huge towers.  We set out for Turkey Creek, which, last year was washed away in the floods and then rebuilt by the government for the Aboriginal people.  It is like a roadhouse and camp ground and housing for the people who live there. We kept going until we reached a free park outside the gate to Mabel Downs, where the Pernalulu (Bungle Bungles) domes are.  It is something right out of the box,  We flew over it last year, but this year we did the drive into Mabel Downs.  It was 75 km of dirt road, corrugations, 15 river crossings. At one stage there we bumped into the guy who owns and runs the Tow-Ed Training Course busniess, whom we know.  You never know who you will bump into out in the bush.  "This is what I do", he announced to Graeme.

 

The day was all adventure.  We took many lovely photos and the flowering trees were out in full bloom to give a lovely foreground to the beautiful Bungle Bungles.  The road from Kununurra is called The Savannah Way when it starts out, and that is what it is, Savannah country, but it soon turns into the most wonderful rocky mountains of various hues, which reminded me of Palestine or Afghanistan.  They just kept going and the Bungles were hidden in the heart somewhere deep in those mountains, or so it seemed.  So well are they hidden, that few people knew about them until fairly recent times.  The Aboriginees knew and the few Station owners who live out there.  The properties here are vast.  The grass was green, it seemed like The Garden of Eden for cattle.  Breathtaking and beautiful.   Too bad they meet an untimely end.   I saw a bull who has managed to escape muster for his life and still has his big horns and had a black head and neck and a beautiful brown, shiny coat for the rest.  He was such a speciment and still running free.  Good luck to him.      We saw a big black snake on the road and a pretty brown one, both about six feet long.   Graeme walked into Cathedral Chasm, but it was so vast he felt disappointed that he could not photograph it.  I took a gentler way and was just surrounded by the big bee-hive-shaped domes.  I kept snapping away as the light changed on the domes.  It was a magnificent day of adventure, never to be forgotten.  The clouds in the sky were so beautiful to add to the beauty.

 

Beehive domes and flowers

Bighorse creek sunset

Cathedral Gorge entrance, Bungle Bungles

Cathedral Gorge

Crossing a flooded creek in our car

HCJB Christian short-wave readio, Kununurra

Kununurra sunset

Victoria river sunrise at Big Horse Creek

Victoria river sunset

When we leave here for Halls Creek and Fitzroy Crossing. This area is called "The East Kimberleys".   We are 1/5 of the way across WA.  At last we found warm weather, 32 degrees today and no heater last night needed.  This is the first night we have not needed the heater.     We rejoiced in a van park where we could have A/C, W/M, water (not to drink, but good for a swimming pool and a shower), clean clothes, which are enjoyed from time to time and even some shops to replenish supplies and a PO.  Mosly Aboriginal people are in these western towns.