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Published: July 29th 2012
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Day 21 – Friday 20
th July – El Questro on the Gibb River Road
Up at 6, cup of tea and on the road again at just before 7am. We had a quick stop at the start of the Gibb River Road to a) take a photo of the Gibb River Road sign(!) and b) reduce the tyre pressure for the rough, unsealed road. We were a bit disappointed that the first 15 or so kilometres were actually sealed! The turnoff to El Questro is about 30 kms from the start of the Gibb River Road and it is a further 16 kms along a 4WD track (with two decent water crossings) till you reach the Township.
We rolled into the Township just on 8am and had been counting the camper vans/ trailers leaving the property on the way in. The very friendly and helpful staff at reception told us that there was a choice of a few private campsites, so our plan for getting there early had paid off! We chose the nearest private campsite to the reception/ store area – Number 5, Quail – which is next to some gentle rapids in the Pentecost River,
5kms from the main area and a short walk to some drop toilets. Happy days! You really feel as though you are completely on your own when you have a private campsite. You hear just the noises of nature – in our case the babbling of the river, the whishing of gentle wind through the trees, the birds, frogs and occasionally the cattle which roam the property (El Questro is also a working cattle station). We had the tent pitched by 9.30 and made ourselves at home exploring our little area for a while. It was nice to have a bit of downtime after all the driving we have done in the past few days.
Lunch was warm wraps with spaghetti and cheese, then we did some more relaxing. Ahhhhh. Anna and Luke made a spa for us in the rapids (we were pretty sure there would be no crocs in our little patch of the river and the El Questro guys thought we would be pretty safe…) and I sat chilling (literally) in the water reading my book. Heavenly! We decided on a low key day and chose to drive to the Moonshine Gorge to see if we
could see any turtles. The drive to the Gorge has the longest water crossing on the property and it was pretty spectacular, if not really deep. We found Moonshine Gorge Pool after a very bumpy ride in and hopped in the water with snorkels, masks and goggles. The water was very cold indeed but Anna and I stuck it out to tour around the pool looking for the elusive turtles. We found small zebra fish and a few other larger fish (no barramundi!) but unfortunately the turtles seemed to be hiding. Shame, as we had the underwater camera with us and were ready to take lots of shots of them.
It was now late afternoon and time to head off to Saddleback Ridge for a 4WD up to the sunset lookout. It was quite a short drive but very steep with some nice tight hairpin bends. The view at the top was sensational and it was time to crack open the beer and enjoy the panorama.
Back at the campsite it was time to roast the veal we had been carrying around in the bottom of the fridge since we left Melbourne! To make it extra tasty we
wrapped it in prosciutto and popped it in the camp oven for about an hour, with baked potatoes as the official vegetable of the meal! And very nice it was too.
This was the end of the third week of our trip and we haven’t seen a proper cloud since we left Victoria!
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