To the Gulf of Carpentaria or "Wyndham Town"

Well this is the first sign of home - our state is in front of us, just the 3,000 odd kilometres between here and Perth.



Just to enhance the crossing we have our prime mover at the wheel to ensure we stay on the right road. well in reality there is only one road here South to Perth or North to Katherine

The road does become a little congested at times this is a view from the cab of one of the many cattle on the road- no fences except a number of road kill that have included on our trip - Camels,Wild pig,Kangaroos, wallabies and numerous unknown Australian Fauna.

We have only contributed to our regret 2 birds. Maybe our speed of between 70 and 80 kph plus very little night driving is the reason.

Another sight which luckily has been very uncommon for us is fire.

These images were taken on this section of the trip and demonstrate the way the fire moves.

They were taken in sequence over a 300 metre stretch of road.

We also came across this large reptile in one town that was a product of the local TAFE
Certainly the largest we have seen to date.

This was a modern road crossing of the Ord river one of the sources of Lake Argyle mentioned later in this episode of the trip. The bridge spanned some 400 metres of empty river.

Then we came across the old crossing.
This was blocked by a huge rock as you can see.
The markings on the road in front of the camera said the river rose to the camera position when the river was in flood..

However at this time the river was as shown below.

Always a country to make us of all environmentally friendly system, this was a cunning fence end post !!

The Ord river is a source of this giant men made lake, Lake Argyle - it was enormous.

This is a 30 MW power station that is the source of power for Kunnunara.

The Government sold the system to private enterprise, I cannot believe this was a sound financial decision for the voters.

Green power and unlimited water source proven over generations??

This is the outfall of the Lake and wends it's way from the dam to Kunnunara some 40 Kms to the south. This discharge river is also designated a lake - Lake Kunnunara that is 40kms long.

Nothing in this area is small.

Another view of the gorge that forms the banks of Lake Kunnunara.

We had lunch at the green treed area to the left, cool and full of Aerial fauna.

The technical details of the dam wall are here.

Some of the dangers common to Lake Kunnunara are listed here.

At the Wyndham camp site this wild donkey appeared - apparently he calls at the site every day during the tourist season and then disappears until next season.

Is it wild ??

At this camp site - which only had one redeeming feature which was the 2,000 year old Baob Tree -well that's what the sign stated - and we have come to believe all we read - otherwise nowhere would be unique.

No doubt about it's size!

Another nights stop where Mike found the fire with a Pernod and chair first.

Then comes another sunset over a river bed with very little water.

directly under the sun in this image was supposed to be a Crocodile, we looked but failed to locate the reptile.

Should we have wadded in to be sure??

Well we reached the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Very impressed with the size again but the mud and water colour was dull as you can see.

This was Wyndham at it's historic best.

The pub.

Plenty of history and memorabilia.

But as Katherine said -the dirt, dust, broken furniture and high prices were equally memorable






Distance from Perth = 3359 Kms

Distance travelled on Trip = 17,844 Kms

Number of days on the road = 256