The Gibb River Road

From Broome we headed into ‘The Kimberley’ along the Gibb River Road to explore the many amazing gorges between Broome and Kununurra. To start the Gibb River Road we travelled with 3 French dudes we met at the caravan park and it soon appeared Skeat’s luck was changing… except it had now been passed on to anyone who travelled with us. The Frenchies blew a tyre on a bitumen road on the way to the Gibb River Road…

The first casualty

We lost the Frenchies in Derby when they went looking for somewhere to fix their tyre so we headed along the Gibb River Road by ourselves and spent our first night in ‘The Kimberley’ camping by a little creek where we met 5 young backpackers who were also doing the Gibb River Road. We ended up having a few beers and some goon with our new mates and travelling with them the following day to see Tunnel Creek, which is pretty much a creek that flows through a tunnel in the bottom of a hill for a couple of hundred metres… pretty cool place! While at Tunnel Creek our new mates also inherited Skeat’s bad luck and got a flattie.

Our first camp along the Gibb River Road

Some new mates

Tunnel Creek

Tunnel Creek

Tunnel Creek

From Tunnel Creek we left our new mates and headed for Windjana Gorge, which they had done the day before and planned to meet up with them that night and camp together. However it seemed that Skeat’s passed on bad luck had other ideas as it turns out the steering on their car broke as they were leaving Tunnel Creek and they had to make the long and slow drive back to Derby to get it fixed.

Anyway we headed to Windjana Gorge and saw our first crocodile (only a freshwater croc) and experienced our first Kimberley gorge and it was pretty amazing.

Windjana Gorge

Windjana Gorge

Our first croc... I think it was pretty intimidated by Skeat

Bats in Windjana Gorge

We ended up catching up with the Frenchies at Windjana Gorge so we camped with them that night and explored the Lennard River Gorge and Bell Gorge together. Both amazing gorges where you can have a good swim and jump from the cliffs.

First river crossing... the Frenchies failed!

Trekking!

Lennard River Gorge

Bell Gorge

Jumping from the cliffs got a bit extreme though when we decided to jump off the cliffs at Bell Gorge. These cliffs were about 15m high and seemed like good fun... but what we didn’t realise was that hitting water after falling 15m would leave your body hurting for a couple of days. Skeat though is pretty lucky he wasn’t sore for a lot longer after he decided he would do a back flip from this cliff. I don’t really think Skeat thought about the consequences of stuffing this back flip up but about halfway down I’m pretty sure he regretted doing it as spun out of control towards the water… luckily he managed to do a half dive and didn’t get hurt.

Bell Gorge cliff jump

Skeat on the way down from his attempted backflip

Over the next couple of days we travelled solo and checked out Adcock Gorge, Galvans Gorge and Manning Gorge, which were all beautiful but one turned out to be our favourite for the whole Kimberley. That gorge was Galvans Gorge… it wasn’t particularly spectacular or anything but it was just a fun place. It had a deep pool at the bottom of a waterfall which you could sit under it in several spots, cliffs which you could jump off into the pool and a rope to swing on… the best!

Adcock Gorge

Galvans Gorge... amazing!

Galvans Gorge

Kimberley roads

One we had done these gorges we then started the long and uncomfortable drive north along over 200km of corrugated and rocky road to Mitchell Falls. It was on this drive we came to realize that Skeat is still very much unlucky. About 2km from Mitchell Falls (so after over 200km of driving on these dodgy roads) Skeat’s bull bar decided to have it bolts rattle loose from the constant corrugations and was going to drop and pop one of Skeat’s tyres.

The road to Mitchell Falls

The road to Mitchell Falls

Not good...

The damage

We got some weird looks with the new addition to white car

The new look Navara... Dakar Blue!

The drive north was somewhat worth it in the end as we saw some beautiful and spectacular waterfalls (the biggest and highest of ‘The Kimberley’). These waterfalls were Mitchell Falls, Little Mertens Falls and Big Mertens Falls.

Little Mertens Falls

Big Mertens Falls

Mitchell Falls

Mitchell Falls

After safely returning from Mitchell Falls we continued east along the Gibb River Road until we came to the El Questro Wilderness Park which has some amazing spots which we checked out over a couple of days. We also had a random and very drunk night at the bar at El Questro… amazing Sunday session!

El Questro

El Questro Gorge

Emma Gorge... amazingly clear water!

Explosion Gorge

Zebedee Springs - El Questro

From here we checked out Wyndham and Kununurra but not much has really happened here… Wyndham is in contention for the biggest dive we have visited.

Sunset at Wyndham

Surprisingly after a couple of quiet weeks on the blog updates you are probably going to get another one soon so stay tuned...

...and some randoms.

Dead Horse Creek

Too much!

Car Vs Cow

Doing the housework

The team

Broome and Cape Leveque

Well we haven’t done of these for a while.  We were going to do one the day before we left Broome but instead we just got pissed and went out…

Since our last update we briefly visited the Millstream-Chicester National Park which was on the way from Karijini National Park to Karratha.  Unfortunately our visit to Karratha wasn’t as brief... best thing about that place was leaving.  From Karratha we headed for Broome were we passed through another shit hole Pt Headland and checked out 80 mile beach.

Millstream-Chichester National Park

A couple of dirty cars in Karratha

Then the Broome bender began… starting on a Wednesday night at the Divers Tavern at Cable Beach and ended over a week later with a big night out at ‘The Roey’ (Roebuck Bay Hotel).  In total we spent 8 nights in Broome and we were drunk for 7 of them… Good times!

The start of every night... Emus!

Wet T-shirt contest at 'The Roey'

Wet T-shirt...?

The highlight of our week in Broome would have to be the very loose day at the Broome races, which was fuelled by vodka we had snuck in and involved Matti and Bennett giving ridiculous interviews for a local radio station about our thoughts on the recent development to the Broome racecourse.  Matti was particularly impressed about how they had painted the stairs bright yellow so people can see them and won’t trip over them…

 

Matti doing his interview... so funny!

The eyes of a very drunk man

Kicking on from the Broome races at Matso's Brewery

One of the many drunk nights at 'The Roey'

Trouble...?

Skeat in his element with a local farmer

Another highlight would be Tuesday night at the Murphy’s Irish pub which started with Matti getting refused entry because he was wearing ‘boardshorts’.  They weren’t boardshorts at all, they were going out shorts but the bouncers argument was that they were shorts you would were at the beach.  Absolutely ridiculous!  So we headed back to the caravan park and decided to be ridiculous ourselves.  This involved Skeat and Alex (a German bloke we met) putting their wetsuits on plus a goggle and snorkel and a nice pair of shoes and together heading back to Murphy’s. 

Matti had changed his shorts so got let in straight away and surprisingly Skeat and Alex got in straight away too.  The bouncer defended his decision but stating the rules which are – no boardshorts and neat, clean casual dress (so he considered wetsuits as neat, clean casual dress).  Matti was fuming!  Funny thing was that at Divers on the first night the same bouncer stopped Matti and only Matti and asked him for ID before letting him in.

Matti getting asked for ID... these were also the shorts that were later called boardshorts

Skeat and Alex in neat, clean casual dress

... and to add to Matti's pain the girls loved the guys in the wetsuits

Anyways there are more stories from our time in Broome but the details and memories are a bit vague... but it was definitely an amazing week!

Cable Beach

Volleyball at Cable Beach with our German mates Phillip and Rosanna

Surfing at Cable Beach

 Sunset at Cable Beach

Caravan Park shenanigans... the best caravan park ever!

So dreamy...

While in Broome we also headed up to Cape Leveque for a couple of days.  It’s a pretty amazing place and we by far had our best day fishing up there, which included six decent sized trevally and a fair crack at catching a shark. 

Our endevours to catch a shark started traditionally with a rod and reel but after a couple of snapped lines we thought we came up with a failsafe way to catch and land a shark.  This involved some universal Telecom rope, some wire, some hooks and Matti’s tow bar.  Unfortunately we got plenty of bites but we only had snapper hooks and the sharks were just bending the hooks straight and not getting hooked at all.  Bigger hooks and we could have caught about 5 sharks.  Some very fun fishing though!

Cape Leveque

Fishing at Cape Leveque

A successful day fishing... all caught in about 15 minutes.

Shark fishing

One of many failed hooks

Stay tuned for another new post in the next couple of days... and if you haven't noticed from the photos we have had the most amazing weather... blue skies, very little wind and the temperature around 30 everyday.