Grotto, You said it !!

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DAY 220

Well again I was up early today, as we were moving on, Caroline and I sat around discussing whether to go to El Questro or not, but I was happy to leave the decision up to Caroline.

Though at the moment my focus was finishing off the outstanding blog’s, so we are up to date before we leave oh and have some breakfast.

Parry’s Farm Creek is a great campsite, nice and green, the staff are friendly and the facilities are good, oh yea and there is heaps of sunshine and warm weather.

Caroline asks if I fancied a bacon sandwich, I didn’t really need to reply to that empty question so in a few minutes she was off to the camp kitchen with the frying pan and all the goodies to make a bacon sarnie.

We said our goodbyes to people with whom we had chatted to, and were packed up showered and ready to leave at 9.40, just before leaving I watched a guy who had a “Tinny” on the top of his 4x4 get the Tinny off and then back on to realign it, as he had said it wasn’t sitting quite right.

Just before Peter and Maria pulled out Maria came over with a book for Caroline, it was a Maeve Binchy novel, Tara Road, Caroline said it is the only Maeve Binchy book that she has ever read, her Mum lent it to her a long while ago to read, however said that it was such a good book she will read it again.

We have seen loads of Utes and 4x4’s with Tinny’s on but I have never seen the process of taking off and putting back on, its quite fascinating, when its done mechanically, apparently this particular device was designed by a bloke who had spent months in Hospital with a broken back, but I can not obviously say how true that it is, but all I know for someone with an engineering mind is wow, that worked a treat.

We pulled off the property and back down the track about 7K’s until we got to the bitumen, then turning on to the main highway, the morning was already hot and sunny.

Caroline wanted to stop at “The Grotto” which was an area of natural beauty in sort of a gorge with a swim hole that is reputedly 30 meters deep, though there would be no need to take our bathers down as Caroline struggles to get in to cold water at the best of times and neither of us can imagine that the water will be that pleasant as it has not been running for a while.

We pulled up and parked the truck, grabbed our camera’s, and wandered off towards the grotto, a little old Austin Morris that the painted green caught my eye in the car park, and my thoughts of admiration where to people who drive these cars around, especially in a place like Australia, where you could be miles from anywhere if you were misfortunate enough to break down.

There were apparently 140 steps down to the bottom, but a lady who had just walked up clutching her husband for dear life commented that she had counted 126 steps though perhaps some may have eroded over time, she commented that the water was very monkey, and the surface was covered in what looked like algae but they think it may have been blossom.

All credit to this lady, she sounded puffed out when she came back up to the top, Caroline commented on this and she told us that if was pure fear, she cried on the way back up she was so scared of heights, the reason why she counted the steps was to try and take her mind off the climb back up.

A young couple walked past us with their bathers in their hands and whilst we were talking had gone down to the pool and come back up, we asked if they had swum and they said that there was a huge water monitor down there and they didn’t want to get in the pool with him, also that it was a bit too stagnant for them.

We weren’t that impressed with the Grotto in general, so just took some pictures and headed off. Of course it is the wrong time of year to see the Grotto at its best, you really need to see it when it has been raining and the waterfall is cascading fresh water into the grotto below.

The road was exceptionally quiet, we pulled in to Kununurra at around lunch time, managed to park the truck in a double bay, then wandered off to the Post Office, as we needed to collect our UHF radio that had been repaired and had travelled from Broome, in WA, back to Perth, on to Adelaide, back to Perth to Broome finally landing at the post office in Kununurra, without any fuss or bother it was repaired and sent back to us, truly amazing and it had probably covered 10,000k’s in the process. We just went in showed our proof of identity which in this case was my passport then hey presto we had our package.

Our lunch time stomachs were calling so we went in to the town centre and grabbed a bite to eat, then it was back to the truck as we needed to go and find a camp site to park the Wendy house, before all of the camp sites were full.

We had some local knowledge from the girl where we had got some lunch, and she had said to stay away from any campsite near the river as the mosquitos were vicious in this area, and we had also been warned off from the Big 4 in Kununurra as it was noisy amongst other things, so we headed off to Hidden Valley which has been recommended to us.

Hidden Valley is situated next to the Mirima National Park, which is a mini version of the Bungle Bungles, we have a splendid view of them from our campsite.

We erected camp, then settled in for a cup of tea, and caught up on our emails as we had excellent service on the Telstra dongle, I managed to Skype a guy who I worked with on my last project who was leaving for Australia within an hour of speaking to him on a years adventure with his wife lynn, they will be landing in Sydney on Wednesday morning feeling like shit.
As soon as we had done these chores were done it was off to the supermarket to re stock with essential provisions.

Just as we were walking in to the supermarket when saw Andrew and Kirsty walking out, they had been in Kununurra quite early but struggled to find a suitable site to park the Caravan and ended up in an overflow car park on one of the caravan parks by the lake, they were as surprised as we were that the parks were so full here. I think we are coming into school holidays in Northern Territory so I think this must be part of the reason.

We got board with talking to them (No, Only Joking!) and went in for a zoom around Coles on the trolley.

Loading all the groceries back in to the truck we were parked next to a ute that had three dogs sitting in the back, they had that look in their eyes “Get too close” and we will bark our heads off.

Back at camp the day had nearly disappeared, I asked Caroline what she wanted to eat for dinner and she said she didn’t feel to bright, so all the things I suggested she didn’t fancy, when I mentioned chocolate she said the same, so I know she wasn’t feeling to well.

I warmed up last nights left overs of Pasta and Chorizo and Caroline had some of that said she felt a little better, Caroline sat and read for a while, we also read on the internet that there is a creamy variation of Vegemite being launched by its makers, after some research they decided to make it with cream cheese, it is launched next month, but they will have a naming competition for it which is what they did with the original Vegemite when it was invented in 1922.

I am not sure that Caroline will be trying it she hates Vegemite, we were both brought up on Marmite, you can buy it out here, but it is under a different name (same jar), called Our Mate, however we have not seen any on the supermarket shelves for a long while. There is a different product out here called marmite but it is quite a similar taste to vegemite.

It was 9.30, the evening had just turned a little cooler, and we were both tired so we went off to bed.

Despite the campsite being busy it was absolutely silent after 9.30, there are a lot of permanent residents here who are working in the area.

Just as an interesting point someone told us that if you dropped a piece of Orange peel in the North of Australia it would take 7 years to decompose as it is so dry, it would just dry up hard and as water is so scarce, it just won’t rot down

Until tomorrow Bloggers.

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Photos

The Grotto
The Grotto was a deep hole that you could walk down to and swim in, it is reportidly 300 Mtrs deep

Old Moggy
This old car looked a picture

Towards Kununurra
What a straight road

Butter wouldn't melt
Get to close and we will bark

I may be old
But I am a Handsom Hound