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We are staying at Emma Gorge which is part of El Questro a part cattle station part tourist venue. Emma Gorge is about 25 ks from the main site and is about 50 permanent tent style accommodation. I randomly picked Emma Gorge and glad I did. Not a vanner in sight, unfortunately they do seem to host some of those APT buses (presumably the ones that can’t afford the Rhine tours) so there is no shortage of old people.
First thing in the morning we did Emma Gorge which is nice little waterfall with bathing pool at the bottom. The water was freezing. While Becs was swimming a guy showed me a great picture of a snake he found in the pool. I thought of telling Becs but decided against it.
We them headed I to El Questro to drop the tyre in for repair with my new mate Colin and to drive some of the four wheel drive tracks. First we headed to Pigeon Hole Lookout which has a beautiful view of the Pentecost River. There were a couple of women in a Jeep Wrangler. I wished them good luck (with parts). Then we
had a look at Saddleback Ridge. The sign said experienced 4WD drivers only. Becs and I debated how experienced I was. We decided that I qualified as experienced. We were fine it was very steep but I was able to negotiate it using all my experise. Then we decided to do Explosion Gorge. At Explosion Gorge they don’t even have a sign for experienced 4WD drivers just an indemnity form. We went about 200m down a very steep jump-up (Experienced 4WD lingo for the bit that leads up from a river crossing) and then the track just disappeared into a jumble of rocks as far as the eye could see. We decided to turn around. Not because I was scared but we were running late for our river cruise.
We cruised the Chamberlain Gorge which like all these gorges is spectacular. We stopped for champagne (actually I think it was Porphory Pearl which I haven’t seen for ages, but grog is so difficult to get I had two glasses). There are these funny fish which when you hold a little bit of food above the water (a metre above) they shoot a stream of water at it
thinking it’s an insect. A guy was trying to take a photo and they just kept hitting his camera.
El Questro is the world’s biggest caravan park 1 filled with all my favourite things like caravans, campervans, gray nomads and fat people in black tights. We picked up the tyre from Colin and we had a chat about tyre pressures etc. Becs and I had a beer at the bar and all the staff turned up for afterwork drinks including Colin. He was wearing a mid riff top which seemed unusual.
We had dinner in the steak restaurant and we drove back. Admittedly I was probably borderline but figured that a random breath test in a 10k stretch of the Gibb River Road was unlikely even in the world’s most overpoliced country.
One thing I will say is people get up early at Emma Gorge. We were at breakfast at about 6.30am with the APT tour group. We headed out to El Questro to Zebedee Springs which is a thermal stream, It was popular but very pleasant. Again amazing how tropical the vegetation is once you get a bit of water. Then we headed back to Emma Gorge for a helicopter ride over the Cockburn Ranges. It was pretty windy and the helicopter looked like it had been used for MASH. I loved it but I think Becs found it scary. I had total confidence in James even though he was a kiwi.
We had a relaxing afternoon at the bar where I caught up on travelblog entries and watched the new APT tour group getting briefed on where the toilets were etc.
We had dinner at Emma Gorge and had a chat to the waitress who had come from Heron Island. She had driven by herself the whole way in a Jeep. I was horrified.
1 Not an official statistic
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