28th May 2010 - Fitzroy Crossing to Warmun

Distance travelled: 448

Cumulative distance: 9792

Had breakfast at the Kimberley Lodge in Fitzroy Crossing. Left nice and early at 8am. The weather looked a bit iffy but the rain held off thank goodness. Headed to Halls Creek 270kms down the Great Northern Highway. The scenery has started to change with some more hills and creek crossings which actually had some water in them; probably due to the recent rain. Arrived at Halls Creek about midday and had coffee and cake at the local bakery. We had been warned that Halls Creek wasn't worth stopping at because there was not a lot going on. We were directed to the Vistor Information centre where a guy called Mark told us all the great things we could do in Halls Creek. This is a statue of a bloke who push his mate in a wheel barrow for 300kms to get help. We wanted to book a scenic flight over the Bungle Bungles at Warmun (Turkey Creek) as all the roads in were closed. He said the dirt runway was out of action because of the rain. The runway in Halls Creek was sealed so he suggested we did the flight from there ... which we did. Clint was our pilot and he took Colin and I up in his single engined Cessna. Luckily the weather was clear at the altitude we were travelling at and we had a great view of the countryside. Clint gave us a running commentary on all the sights. The East Kimberley region is as big as Germany with a population of 35,000. Fairly thin on the ground. There are a lot of mines in the area mainly nickel and gold. The main agriculture is beef farming and the average size of the Cattle Stations is 150,000 hectares ... pretty big. We flew over a few to give us some idea of the size. When we got to the Bungle Bungles the views were spectacular from the plane. The rock formations were very impressive with deep gorges and sculptured formations. It is all part of the Devonian Reef which existed 350 million years ago and surrounded the then land mass of Western Australia. We flew down valleys that had been created by millions of years of erosion by the rivers. On the way back to Halls Creek Clint took us over the old town of Halls Creek. Only the old post office still stands as the rest of it was demolished and taken to the new site in 1957. The reason it was moved was the lack of reliable water supply, a common problem in Australia. They had sunk bores at the new site and found plenty of water. After we got back from the flight we jumped on our bikes and headed to Warmun at Turkey Creek which is a roadhouse 160 kms north. We arrived there to find very expensive fuel, room not ready and food that was pretty awful. In the evening we played cards in our never ending game and Colin decided to give up on it after I reached a lead of 250. We trashed the cards and tomorrow we will start with a new deck and a new game.