We arrived in Kununurra which is a relatively young town only established in 1963 to service the irrigation area. The building of the Diversion Dam Wall across the Ord River formed a lake known as Lake Kununurra and these waters were then diverted via channels to irrigate the farmlands. From the time of the early pioneers it had been thought that the Ord River could be harnessed, like the Nile River in Egypt and today the area around the river is rich fertile land growing an abundance of crops. Although getting those crops to market is not easy as it’s a long distance from anywhere. Currently the most significant crop in the area is Indian Sandalwood with other main crops being mangoes, grapefruit, chia and melons. Lake Argyle which is approximately 72 km in length is ... read more

We left Exmouth where we had spent the last couple of weeks and will have wonderful memories of the area for a long time. In particular our encounter with the huge Whale Sharks out on the Ningaloo Reef and our swim with the endangered Green Turtle in Turquoise Bay in Cape Range National Park. We headed South to Coral Bay where we had stayed on our way up the coast and had pre-booked into a campsite directly opposite the beach. It took us a couple of hours drive and we were back in Coral Bay and settled into People’s Park Site. We were allocated a lovely pitch overlooking the coral bay with only a few steps to the beach and reef. We snorkelled out near the coral glass viewing boats where there was huge underground ‘boulders’ ... read more

After a goodnight’s rest we were ready to face the road again and travelled out of Toodyay and arrived in a small town called GinGin where we stopped to stock up on our supplies at the local supermarket. The area supports many forms of farming including beef cattle, cerial crops, olives and oranges. The first European to visit the area was the explorer George Fletcher Moore; he arrived in 1836 and recorded the Aboriginal name "Jinjin" on his charts. The first property to be established in the area by W L Brockman in 1841 was named Gingin station. The meaning of the word Gingin is uncertain but is thought to mean "footprint" or "place of many streams". Good name for a town but ‘no’ we did not buy two bottles of Gin – although some Bombay ... read more

We have at last arrived in Western Australia (WA) and although the flight was 3¼ hours, with the time difference we actually arrived 15 minutes after we had taken off! The rain thank goodness had not followed us from Victoria as the skies in Perth were pure blue and the temperatures were well into the 30s (hope we do not live to regret these high temperatures)……. We caught a shuttle bus to our self contained accommodation which overlooked the river in the centre of Perth. Our first impression of Perth was that it was an extremely modern and tidy city, located alongside the peaceful waters of the Swan River about 20k inland from the Indian Ocean. The City was located here for its safe inland position during colonial times, while the river provided an excellent means ... read more

We arrived at Melbourne airport to collect our hire car but when we went to the allocated bay there was no car to be seen!!! So we had to return to the office and be allocated another one (never did find out what happened to the original one!). We thought we would have Victorian number plates this time but the car had a NSW plates instead. Again we could not negotiate on price although we have used Hertz this time which was cheaper on the quote than Avis. We set off using our own Satnav from the airport heading out to Somerville to see Ros again. Before long the Satnav instructed us to turn off the motorway, which we duly followed only to realise that we had set it to avoid any toll roads and therefore ... read more