Did we miss Nicole and Hugh?

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At the crack of dawn we drive into Kununurra...well we arrive at the visitors centre at 9am and John had even had time to have a shower using our portable solar shower(really not worth it but it came with the van!) so yes it was an early start for us! The town sits on Lake Kununurra on the River Ord and is a relatively new town. It was developed in the 1960’s to service where the river had been dammed to form a storage reservoir to supply water for an irrigation scheme. A 1 million acre cattle station was flooded to create the biggest man made lake in Australia, Lake Argyle. As we drove into Kununurra we crossed over the diversion dam, Lake Kununurra and the river Ord...all very impressive!
Kununurra’s other claim to fame we soon discovered is that Baz Lurmans film “Australia” was shot around the town and surrounding areas. Everywhere we went in the town had some film memorabilia and pictures of Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman!
Once again we are confronted by lots of aboriginal people who are hanging around the town with dubious looking bottles of “ lemonade” at this early hour of the morning and again I can’t help getting a feeling of what has gone wrong with the community why alcohol is such a big problem.
We drive out to a lookout point, Kellys Knob just outside the town which stands at 191m and provides stunning views of the town and the Ord valley. On the way back we stop at the Waringarri aboriginal arts centre which has some absolutely stunning pieces of art, all created by local people. I’m very tempted to buy a piece until I see the price tag on the one that I like...$7500! Maybe not but all proceeds do go back into the local community and its giving a helping hand to some of the local people. We head over to Lily Creek lagoon, a lake filled in after the construction of the diversion dam which now is home to lots of wildlife as well as freshwater crocodiles, and from here head to the Mirimar National Park on the edge of Kununurra. In the NP are 300million year old sandstone cliffs, often referred to as the ‘mini bungle bungles’. The views from the top of the cliffs is amazing and we can see right across to where we had walked this morning and across the valley, absolutely beautiful.

As we leave Kununurra behind we also leave the state of West Australia behind and cross the border into the Northern Territories. Its weird to be crossing a border in the same country and one of the first things we notice is that there is now a new speed limit (130km/hr) We also have to put our watches forward by 1½ hours which is going to mean darker mornings but lighter evenings. Now that we are in NT we no longer have a free campsites map so we pull into the next rest area that we come across. The signs say 24hr camping so hopefully we should be ok without a guidemap. We fill up our showerbag with water as its free here and also discover once we push on from here that in the NT it gives you a countdown to your next rest stop so at least we can plan where and when we next need to stop. As we continue we once again pass a lot of roadkill and also find that there are now cows wandering on the road...great no longer kangaroos but now cows!! We also have a bit of a shock as for the first time in absolute ages we get to an electric road sign warning of road works ahead and then as we round a hill we also come to a red traffic light. It seems so out of context out here!
After losing most of the light (gorgeous sunset as driving) we decide to stop for the night in the Gregory NPark at the Sullivan campground. As we pay our $6 camping fee we can’t help but notice that the honesty box is sounding a little empty and yet the campsite is very full!! If people don’t pay then the facilities may not be available in the future for others so its a little disappointing, especially as its so cheap!

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