To Broome and Back!: Day 55. Kununurra - Day trip to El Questro & Wyndham. 05/07/2015

We set off this morning at 8 am sharp for our journey to El Questro where we planned to spend a few hours before heading up to Wyndham. The morning was sunny with a slight breeze that would be most welcome if we did any hiking.

After travelling some distance on the Great Northern Highway, we reached the turnoff to the famous "Gibb River Road". We travelled some 20 kms to the turnoff to El Questro. At this point, if we went straight ahead. We could take the unmade road for a further 300 kms or so, but as we had no intention of doing that, we ventured just a couple of kilometres to experience the terrible condition of "the road". There is no way John would travel any further and absolutely never take a van on it. It was bad, bad, bad. We made a "u turn" and then turned down a very dusty gravel and bumpy road for a further 19 kms to El Questro. This part of the trip was very interesting with amazing escarpments on either side of us looming large in the landscape We crossed the King River and the Emma Gorge creek, before we had to carefully negotiate two river crossings that had the water up to the running boards of the Prado, the first being Moonshine Creek which was quite small and the second was over the Pentecost River just before we entered into the El Questro Station which is set inside the Wilderness Park. Boasting rugged landscapes and native flora and fauna it is one of Australia's last frontiers. The landscape is diverse with broad tidal flats and rugged sandstone ranges to rainforest pockets, gorges and waterfalls.
A morning coffee before setting off on foot to explore the Station, camping areas, the river and safe swimming holes. There were many camps set up along with wilderness units etc. We then drove to Chamberlain Gorge and on the return journey had distant view of the Homestead which is a luxury boutique property set on a clifftop and caters for just 18 guests. We also had a brief look at what are called private camping sites along the river set back off the road and quite isolated from the rest of the camping areas and they did not appear to have any amenities.
We retraced our drive out of El Questro so that of course meant we had to do the two river crossings again but it also meant we could enjoy the magnificent scenery one more time.
After reaching the Great Northern Highway we continued our journey to Wyndham. The scenery continued to delight us and only took about 3/4 hr. Wyndham was a bit of shock to us. I think we were expecting some sort of coastal town but of course we were wrong. It was a very depressing township even though it is billed as "Top Town of the West". The town was gazetted in 1886 and has a diverse history of cattle industry and mining and the port is still in use today although it looked to us as though times are tough at present. We drove up to the Five Rivers Lookout at 330 metres above sea level on the Bastion Range and the view was spectacular. The five rivers that flow into the Cambridge Gulf are the King, Ord, Durack, Forest and Pentecost. The views of the mudflats and the surrounding ranges were stunning.
We had a picnic lunch at the lookout before returning down to the township and out to the very old Pioneers Cemetery that had graves dating back to 1886.
Returned to camp and decided to have Happy Hour down on the grassy knoll (no Shooter here) to enjoy the Lagoon on sunset and wait for the millions of bats that fly over each night. Lots of campers had the same idea tonight so there was quite a buzz around the area.
A very interesting day but we saw more of the beautiful Kimberley's.